Tails X
by AJudgeToCrush
Summary: Centered around Tails after the Japanese episode of Sonic X. Tails gets his own adventure, fights the bad guys, saves the world, along with battling the guilt over losing Cosmo. Ch 21 up!
1. Archetypes and Repetition

Ch1

_Disclaimer: I do not own Sonic, Tails, or any other characters or ideas that belong to Sega and Sonic Team. I am using them for unprofitable means and do not take credit for anything involved in this fan fiction. All credit goes to Sega and Sonic Team._

_I will not give a summary because a summary would spoil the plot, which I do not completely know myself. I have all of the main plot points in my head, but other than that, I don't know where this is going. This is a fan fiction mainly based on Tails and serves as an interpretation of my ideas of what happened to him after the Japanese 78__th__ episode of Sonic X. If you have not seen it, you may want to view it first at a website called dailymotion. Just go to the website and search for sonic x 78 subbed and it should be there._

_Chapter 1: Archetypes and Repetition_

oOo

Tails was sitting in his workshop staring off into space. The only thing on his mind since the final Metarex battle was the only girl he had ever though of as more than a friend; Cosmo.

He wondered if this was what a broken heart was, but his head told him it wasn't. She didn't hurt him; he hurt himself by pushing that button. He took her life and because of it, was without her. She was supposed to come back to his planet with him and he wanted to do so many things with her, but now that would never happen, and that fact slowly ate away at him from the inside.

After Tails had heard two familiar voices close by, he snapped out of it, pretended to work on something, wiped the tears away, and forced a smile on his face. He knew that if Amy and Cream saw him in that state, they would be worried and want to get him help, and that was the last thing he wanted.

"Tails?" Cream called out into the open garage.

The yellow fox was by the cockpit of the X-Tornado and jumped out to face them. "Yo!" he replied with the fake smile on his face.

"How you doing, Tails?" Amy asked being as friendly as possible.

He felt his smile fade away for a brief moment, but caught it before Cream or Amy could take note of it. "I'm fine. So, what brings you guys here?"

The two girls pulled out baskets from behind them and held them up. "Amy and I made lots of sweets for you!" Cream cheerily replied.

Tails didn't have to fake his smile anymore. "Cool! Let's go out back and sit down."

He led them out of the back door of the garage and to a small picnic table placed a few yards from the actual house. The house was not big at all, being only made of three rooms; a bathroom and a living room kitchen combo, and his small bedroom that consisted of the upper floor. Although the house was small, it was part of a massive hangar hidden underground that was large enough to hold the Blue Typhoon. The location of the property was nice too, being on the ocean with a white sandy beach and surrounded by beautiful cliffs.

The three sat down and opened the two baskets. Cream had made a bunch or assorted cakes and Amy had made a large pie. They all dug in and conversed like normal, Amy and Cream being careful to avoid the topics of Cosmo and the Metarex. They talked of the things they had done in the six month period of being back on their home planet and what they had been doing the past few days after they got back from space.

Tails had to lie to them about what he had been doing lately. He said he was up to normal things like tinkering with his X-Tornado and inventing, but he had really been in the saddest state he had ever been. The only two things he did were cry and stare off into space.

He didn't eat much of anything anymore and because of which, was doing the most damage to the vast supply of food before him. Amy and Cream watched him chow down on cakes and devour half of the pie in few short minutes. After he had had enough, he sat back in his chair.

"Uh, when was the last time you ate, Tails?" Amy asked.

Tails had to think about it for a second. "I don't know." He replied monotonously letting his smile fade slightly.

Cream quickly tried to pull him back into a good mood. "It looks like you enjoyed it."

"Yes, I did. Thank you guys." The yellow fox replied with a small hint of happiness in his tone.

Tails took all of the garbage away and rejoined the girls back at the table outside. They casually talked like they normally did, but near the end of the day; Tails wasn't even trying to be happy. Although he had enjoyed a few moments with his friends every once in a while, since the end of the Metarex, after a while he had no desire to be in any kind of contact with anyone.

Amy could tell that Tails wanted to be alone, and tried to end the conversation kindly. "I hope we see you again soon, Tails," she began. "We have to go. I promised Cream's mother that I would have her back before dark."

Tails looked to the sky and noticed the sun was not in view anymore, even though there was still the colorful orange and pink light plastered across the landscape. The sight made him feel warm inside. The sunset was so gentle, so calm, and nothing could ever ruin it for him.

"Alright. Thank you guys again." He replied.

They all got up and Tails walked them to the front of the house to see them off.

"Good bye, Tails!" Cream called out as her and Amy walked down the beach away from the house.

"Come and visit sometime, okay?" Amy added.

Tails gave them a wave and once they had disappeared from sight, the happy mask that was on him, fell off. His posture slumped, arms hung loosely to his sides, and his once lively aqua eyes deepened into a pool of unhappiness. The young fox slowly walked into his home and upon entry, threw himself onto a small couch in the main room.

The room was indeed small, holding the kitchen, a small table, and small couch and television. Tails lay down and propped his feet up, while staring at the ceiling above him. Daydreaming was all he did now, and his mind always wondered to Cosmo, which lead to tears.

The yellow fox turned his head to the window beside the couch, where there was a small pot, with a small green sprout growing in it. It was the small, white seed that Sonic and Shadow had managed to produce from chaos regeneration after he had shot her.

The flashbacks that ensued only added to the pain and guilt that he felt within him. He now knew how Shadow had felt about Maria, and why he was never very happy. This made him wonder what would happen to him. Would he still stay the same happy fox that he always had been, or would he change into an antisocial being of anger and hate like Shadow had?

All of these thoughts saddened him. Tails was a kind, gentle, happy person, but he could feel all of the happiness he ever felt slipping away from him, and there was nothing that could be done to stop it. He sat there and cried, but it wasn't a hysterical cry, it was a quiet cry. Only tears fell from his eyes; he made no noise, did not tremble, he just cried silently. Eventually, the night took hold and he fell asleep on his couch, crying.

His dreams had always leaded to nightmares, guilt, or other feelings that made sleep very unwelcome in his mind, but it was not a choice. One must sleep eventually, and Tails had not slept in a few days, which made his body call for rest, but his head pushed it away. However, the body is larger than the mind.

Tails found himself in the middle of Station Square back in Chris' world. But it was not the same Station Square he knew. It was completely empty, and the colors and shapes of everything around him were distorted in a wicked manner, as the sky was white, and the moon and stars were black.

He was fearful of this new environment, and wondered why there was nobody in sight. Station Square was a large and busy city, and it was unusual not to see anybody, even in the middle of the night.

"HELLO!" Tails called out into the empty city. But the only reply he heard was his own echo.

He began to cautiously walk down the street, heading towards the Thorndyke mansion.

The yellow fox arrived at the front gates and stared at the ghostly mansion through the metal bars. He pushed the button near the edge to call for someone to open the gates. When the button was pressed, the buzzer went off and the gate opened without any words coming from the other end of the speaker.

Tails thought that meant that there had to be somebody home, as the gate was not automatic from what he could remember. He carefully walked up to the front door, which was already cracked, and slowly crept open when Tails got close to it.

Although he did not want to just walk in, Tails could not control himself, and slipped through the entrance and into the main hall. He immediately checked behind the door to see if anyone was there.

"Chris!?" he called out as he walked deeper into the mansion. "Ella!? Mr. Tanaka!? Chuck!?"

But it was no use, the house was empty. Tails turned around to leave, but stopped in his tracks because of the sight before him.

There were several ghostly figures in the center of the main hall, and each one could be recognized by Tails. It was Chris, Tanaka, Ella, and Chuck with blank expressions on their faces. Tails was about to say something to them when another figure appeared behind them. Tails instantly recognized it as Dark Oak, and called out to his 'friends' to move away.

"Guys, he's right behind you! RUN!"

Dark Oak lifted his large golden sword above him and crashed it through the four humans in one swift swing. They turned to darkness as the blade passed through and disappeared into thin air.

"NO!" Tails shouted, but the large robot came up to him very quickly and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, then threw him down to the ground.

When Tails opened his eyes back up, he was in a completely different place. He was at the Master Emerald shrine, where Knuckles and Rouge stood before the large gem. It was a different location, but everything was insanely twisted like back in Station Square.

Tails started to run up to them, until Dark Oak appeared on the Master Emerald behind them. He again lifted his sword and struck down Knuckles and Rouge before Tails could even warn them. He turned around to run away, but again stopped to see Dark Oak along Amy and Cream right in front of him. They too, were destroyed very quickly.

Tails fell to his knees and closed his eyes. "No! Make it stop. I want to wake up." He began to sob as he begged. "I don't want to be here. This isn't right!"

He suddenly felt weightless and opened his eyes. He saw nothing but black, and uncovered his head to reveal that he was in the middle of space. He quickly looked around to see exactly where he was and caught sight of the Space Colony Ark. Two golden lights were floating motionlessly before the giant mass of metal.

Tails ran over closer to see that the lights were Super Shadow and Super Sonic. He also could now see a black mass next to them, and shouted to them. "RUN SONIC!"

The two golden hedgehogs turned to face him, and the one with red streaks on his quills, was impaled from behind. The other hedgehog turned to see Dark Oak before him and did something that the Sonic Tails knew would never do; he kneeled down and bowed to him. A quiet ghostly laugh could be heard from Dark Oak as the blade swiftly removed the head of his best friend.

Sonic's head and body diminished into darkness and Tails could no longer keep himself under control. He dashed up to the mechanical menace and threw a punch, only to fly straight through.

When he turned around, Tails found himself on the bridge of the Blue Typhoon, with a very familiar girl before him. He felt limp in disbelief of what he saw, but he was also happy. Just getting to look at her made him happy, but remembering what had happened to everyone that he saw, he hastily dashed up to her fearful of what he thought might happen soon.

Tears were streaming down his face and his words were jumbled with sobs. "C-Cosmo? I-Is tha-that y-you?"

She didn't say anything, didn't smile, and didn't move. Tails walked closer to her and could see a cloud of darkness form behind her and form into the dark leader of the Metarex.

"NO! Stay away from her!" he demanded angrily.

Tails broke out into a run and jumped between the incoming sword and Cosmo. But it was all in vain, as the golden sword went right through him as if he were transparent, and into the girl behind him. He turned around, examining the blade that should have pierced him, but it was as if he were a ghost.

The end of the blade was noticeably affecting Cosmo though, as she let out a small whisper. "How could you let this happen?", and she too, was consumed by darkness.

Tails fell to his knees again, and cried hysterically. "I couldn't save her! I couldn't save anyone!" he slammed his fist into the ground beneath him. "Damn it! I can't do anything!"

Dark Oak was still there, and could hear all of Tails' words. "You are right. You cannot do anything. The only thing you can do is watch all of your friends die, one by one." After that statement, the dark leader's laughter filled the bridge.

Tails didn't want to be alone. "Kill me too." He asked quietly in between sniffles.

Dark Oak chuckled slightly at the request. "No, you will suffer without your friends as punishment for your weakness."

The dark purple robot turned around and disappeared into a wall of black, his laughter still ringing through the bridge.

Tails was left alone on the ghostly bridge of the Blue Typhoon, and felt a very painful feeling inside him, as if there was a spine skewered inside his chest. Buckets of tears fell from his eyes as he raised himself from his arms and to his knees.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!"

Tails was shaken awake by his own screams. He quickly sat upright and looked around to find himself back in his home, on his couch. The kit took a minute to wipe away his tears and calm down, realizing it was all a dream. With a sigh, he stood up and looked outside. It was the middle of the night, but now had no desire to sleep, so he decided to take a walk.

The yellow fox walked out of the front door and down along the beach. He admired the night sky and full moon outside as he came to the edge of a cliff that over looked the ocean. He let his legs dangle and placed his elbows on his knees and hands under his chin.

The ocean and moon made the spot where Tails sat seem like it was still in the day. The moon shone down and the light of the stars wav reflected in the vast body of water that covered more than half the planet. The gentle breezes that passed played with his bangs and fur, and the sound of the crashing waves below soothed him. He was completely at peace with everything around him.

Tails must have sat there for an hour or so until he felt an unusual gust of wind come from behind, so he turned around to see what it was. It was none other that Sonic the Hedgehog.

"What's up little buddy?" the blue hedgehog greeted in his normal upbeat tone.

oOo

_Give me a week or two for the next one. I don't give myself dates to complete chapters anymore because then I rush through them and they can end up not as well as they could be. Plus, school is really becoming a bitch, and even though I am the laziest, most uncaring individual around, I'm smart enough to do my school work first. _


	2. What Do You Want From Me?

Ch 2

_Here's another chapter that you might want to read after you see the Japanese version of the 68__th__ Sonic X episode. However, this one has not been subbed yet and you can only understand it if you understand Japanese or can read Chinese. If you can't, then you should find a website that compares and contrasts the English and Japanese versions because they are very different and do tie into this chapter. Anyway, this is chapter 2: What Do You Want From Me?_

"What's up little buddy?" the blue hedgehog asked in his normal upbeat tone.

Tails gave a quick smile and turned back around. "Hey Sonic." He replied with some trace of enthusiasm.

Sonic walked up and stood next to Tails on the edge of the cliff. "What are you doin' out here so late? Don't you think you should be sleeping?"

Tails never removed his gaze from the ocean. "I can't sleep."

Sonic now sat down next to him. Tails was going to be the first person he would tell about what happened to Chris. "Chris left earlier today."

"Where to?" Tails asked, not considering that he could have gone home.

"He went back to his planet." Sonic began. "Eggman made a transport for him. He says that we will probably never see him again."

Tails sulked a little, knowing that he had just lost another friend. He sniffled a little, but would not allow himself to cry in front of Sonic, not again. "I'm gonna miss him."

Sonic now stood back up. "We all are. Hey, do you want to go for a walk?"

Tails knew why Sonic wanted to go for a walk; to talk about his feelings and what happened a few days ago, but that was the complete opposite of what Tails wanted to do.. But he knew that Sonic would not take no for an answer, so he stood up and faced his best friend. "Alright."

They walked down the beach in the direction of Tails' house, but they were far away enough for Sonic to get in a good conversation.

After a few moments of silence, Sonic decided to break it. "So, how've you been, Tails?"

Tails still refused to look at him. This was exactly why he did not want to go on a walk, but answered Sonic's question. "I'm fine." He replied monotonously.

Sonic grew an annoyed expression. It was not like Tails to be so emotionless, and he knew that he was depressed because of recent events. "You don't sound so fine."

"I don't care how I sound." Tails stated with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

This caught Sonic a little off guard. It was not like Tails to talk like this to him, and Sonic did not want to hear him speak like that again, so he remained silent for a while.

Once Tails' house was in view, Sonic decided to try again. "What have you been working on lately? Playing with the X-Tornado like usual?"

"Yeah." He blatantly replied.

Sonic was beginning to think that this was useless. When they reached the front door, Sonic stayed a step behind and began to say goodbye to him, but Tails invited him in before he could get the words out.

"You wanna come inside?" the yellow fox asked while holding the door open.

Sonic saw this as an opportunity to keep an eye on Tails and quickly said yes then walked in after him. Tails sat down on the couch by the window where Cosmo's seed resided and Sonic took a seat next to him. Tails grabbed a small remote from in between the cushions of the couch and flicked on the television.

Sonic watched him surf through the channels. The Tails before him looked much different, and in a bad way. He had an empty frown across his face, his eyes were held half open like he had not slept in days, and the bright aqua eyes no longer had a lively shine like they had. Sonic had not seen Tails look like this since he had met him, back when he was bullied for his brilliant inventions and his two Tails. Although Sonic knew that he had no idea of what Tails was going through, it would be good for him to talk about it. But it did not seem that he was going to get anything out of him, not tonight.

Realizing defeat, Sonic resorted to talking like he otherwise normally would to him. "Looking for anything in particular?"

Tails stopped changing channels and turned the television off. "Not really. There isn't anything on in the middle of the night." He replied while using the remote to turn on a small stereo system under the television, causing quiet rock music to flow through the house.

The yellow kitsune stood up and walked across the room into the kitchen area and opened the fridge. "Do you want anything to drink, Sonic?" he asked from across the room.

The blue hedgehog thought about it for a minute, but decided no, not wanting to spoil any sleep that he might get tonight. "No, thanks."

Spoiling sleep seemed to be exactly what Tails was trying to do as he pulled a Mountain Dew out of the fridge, and it was a big one too.

"Y'know, that's going to drive away any sleep you might get tonight." Sonic stated as Tails sat down next to him.

"I know." He replied as he sat back down next to Sonic.

Tails didn't want to fall asleep, and any person could tell that someone Tails' age would not want to sleep because of nightmares. "You don't want to sleep?" Sonic asked.

This was a tough question to answer correctly. If Tails said yes, that would only lead to Sonic asking more questions and trying to pry a way into his feeling. On the other hand, saying no would not fit the way he looked and what he was doing, which would lead to more questions Tails didn't feel like answering.

So the kit did the most logical thing to get out of this squeeze; lie. "I'm in the middle of something with the X-Tornado. I need to stay awake and finish it."

Sonic raised a brow, knowing that Tails was a terrible liar and he could tell even if he was blindfolded. "Really? You _need _to stay awake for it? Then why did you decide to take a midnight stroll before finishing?"

Tails opened his mouth to speak, but nothing would come.

"And then shouldn't you be doing it now?"

Tails had an obvious look of frustration on his face.

"It doesn't seem like something urgent enough to have to keep you from sleeping."

Tails jumped from the couch and took a few angry steps away from it and crossed his arms facing away from Sonic. "What do you want from me? Do you WANT to know that I have nightmares?! Do you WANT to know that when nobody is around I do nothing but cry and daydream?! Do you WANT to know how much things suck for me right now?!"

Sonic stared at him for a minute and felt kind of bad about what he had done. The young kit was shaking slightly and a few quiet sniffles could be heard through the room. He stood up and slowly walked over to him, and then gently placed his hand on Tails shoulder.

Seeing his best friend like this was killing him, and he would never admit it, but Sonic felt like crying too. "No, I just want to know that you're alright." The blue hedgehog said softly.

Tails let the tension in his arms and shoulders go away as he let his arms and loosely by his side and let his head sulk. He shook more than before now and took in deep long breaths, trying so hard not to cry.

Sonic tried to calm him down by rubbing his shoulder with his thumb. "It's alright to cry, Tails." he gently stated.

Tails could no longer help himself, and a steady stream of tears dripped from his white muzzle to the wooden floor beneath him while the quiet sniffling became audible sobs. "I just feel… so… worthless." The young fox began to say. "I couldn't save you, Knuckles, Cream, myself, anyone… not even Cosmo."

That was the first time Sonic had heard him say Cosmo's name, and it was the first time Tails actually had said it since he got back to his planet.

Sonic could feel him start to fall and sway from side to side, so he grabbed Tails' other shoulder to keep him upright. "Let me sit you down." The blue hedgehog said as he guided the sobbing kitsune to the couch.

Tails pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his two large tails around himself.

Sonic sat down also but avoided looking at him, wanting to give Tails a feeling of privacy. What he had said didn't make sense in real life, but he guessed that Tails was feeling guilty, so guilty that it invaded his dreams and caused the nightmares he was having.

"Tails?" Sonic asked, trying to get his friend's attention.

Tails stopped crying but kept his face buried in his tails. "What?"

"You're wrong. You saved everyone, more people than you can count. Every living thing in the universe still exists because of you."

That statement got Tails' attention and he faced the blue hedgehog next to him. Sonic was right, he did save the universe. Sonic and Shadow may have been half the reason why, but he still did it. Suddenly, the fear of losing all of his friends was pulled away, and he managed to show a smile, though he did not speak yet.

After a few moments, Sonic decided what should be done. "Now, you go upstairs and go back to sleep. I'll stay down here for the night."

Although he said it in a gentle way, Tails knew that Sonic was giving him an order and decided to fallow it. "Alright." He began as he stood up. "Thank you, Sonic." The yellow kitsune then proceeded to the back of the room where a staircase led to his bedroom.

After he had heard Tails walk up the stairs and into his room, Sonic kicked his feet up on to the couch and placed his hands behind his head. He felt so bad for Tails. He was his best friend and seeing him like that hurt, and he felt compelled to do whatever he could to make him feel better.

It did not take long for Sonic's eyes to get heavy, and eventually close, sending him into sleep.

oOo

Meanwhile in the outskirts of space, there was a small barren planet floating aimlessly through the black void. It looked to be nothing more than a brown rock, but it held a small amount of life on it.

The planet is known as Cascade and was the battle field of a great battle between the Metarex and a small group of humans. There were pieces of ships and other debris scattered around a rocky mountain area. At the edge of a cliff, there was a small block of metal with a beautiful pink rose lying next to it.

A dark shadow covered the makeshift grave and rose. It was in the shape of a hedgehog letting the passing breeze play with his quills. The shadow then turned away and moved from the site.

"Now I have to get to my planet." A black and red hedgehog said to himself whilst walking through the desert.

After a few minutes of skating, he came to a small town. He had been here before and knew exactly where to go to find a ship. The hedgehog walked into a larger building where he had stayed a few weeks ago with Rouge and Doctor Eggman when they had aided the humans in a battle against the Metarex.

As soon as he entered the building, the humans in it quickly froze, knowing exactly who it was. The humans had betrayed him, Rouge, and Doctor Eggman, and they knew Shadow would not be happy with them.

The hedgehog walked up to a terrified man and grabbed him by the collar.

"Shadow, wait!" he pleaded, thinking Shadow would kill him.

"Stop your whining." Shadow commanded. "I need to get back to my planet. If you give me a ship, I will not kill you."

"Of course! Take mine, it's out back!" the man quickly said, wanting to be let down.

Shadow threw the man to the ground and walked out the back door while exchanging glances with everyone he passed. Once the black hedgehog was out the door, the humans let out a sigh of relief.

oOo

_Yes, Shadow is alive; he's too badass to die. Next chapter out soon._


	3. The Splinter in My Mind

Ch 3

_Sorry this one took so long to update. My laptop broke which had all of the documents on it, then my mom's computer lost internet connection and the motherboard had to be replaced, so I was delayed. Anyway, here's chapter 3: The Splinter in My Mind._

oOo

Peaceful and quiet darkness along with any type of bed were the keys to getting an exhausted kitsune asleep. Tails lay on his bed in the upper floor of his home, one tail being used for a pillow and the other for a blanket, sleeping like a baby. Sunlight poured through the window and onto Tails' face, causing him to be gently pulled from his slumber. Although he was awake now, he stayed where he was and enjoyed the snooze that he had not had since before he journeyed into space on the Blue Typhoon.

However, Tails noticed that his digital clock on his night stand read three o'clock in the afternoon, prompting him to force himself out of bed. After a small mental push, he swung his tails off of him and let his feet fall off the side of the bed and to the ground. The small yellow fox stood up and stretched by spreading his arms way apart and then rubbing his eyes.

What he saw after he had regained focus made his heart jump into his throat; someone he would describe as a beautiful young girl with magnificent green hair and bright aqua blue eyes. He quickly shook his head around and re-rubbed his eyes, not believing what he was seeing. But when he had regained focus again, she was still there.

"Cosmo?" Tails asked unsurely.

The figure simply stood there, hands locked in front of her, and a smile on her face. She appeared to not have even heard Tails.

"Cosmo, is that you?" Tails asked again while walking forward towards her.

She didn't move at all, except for her eyes, which stayed locked on Tails' the whole time. Tails was now right in front of her, but before he could speak again, she started to fade away, like a ghost would.

"No! Wait!" Tails reached his hand out to grab hers, but it went straight through, as if she was not there. After a few brief seconds, 'Cosmo' was gone, just like she was after he shot her. "Come back…" he said quietly.

The guilt and sadness would not fade, no matter how much comfort he received. If he would not be haunted in his dreams, then he would be haunted in every place out of them. She was the splinter in his mind, and no matter how much he hated that splinter, he could not pull it out. It was all that was left of Cosmo, along with the seed, and he just could not forget them.

Tails could feel a small tear crawl down the side of his face. He was becoming tired of crying; it did nothing but make him feel pitiful. The feel of tears leaving his eyes disgusted him.

"No. No more tears." He quietly announced to himself while wiping the small droplet off of his face.

He put all of that behind him and proceeded to walk down the stairs to begin his day. Tails felt something different as he walked down to the bottom floor. It wasn't the same sadness that he would usually be feeling, but it was not happiness either. When he reached the bottom and turned toward the kitchen, he had his answer: another Cosmo archetype standing in the center of his home. Now he knew what he felt, blind anger and hate. Angry that fate was teasing him like this and hating the entire situation he was in and the fact that he is powerless to do anything about it.

Tails chose to ignore her, knowing that it wasn't real and not wanting to further aggravate himself. He quietly walked towards his cabinets, strolling right through 'Cosmo' in the process, causing her to instantly fade away. The yellow fox searched through the cabinets looking for some breakfast. He pulled out the only box of cereal he had, along with two bowls and two spoons. If he had any good milk, he would have grabbed it two, however he hasn't been eating much and had not gotten fresh food in a while.

Trying to be as quiet as possible through the whole process as not to wake the sleeping blue hedgehog on his couch across the room, Tails set one bowl and spoon on one side of his small kitchen table and the others on his side where he sat. How Sonic or anyone could sleep in this late was beyond him, but it made sense, as the blue hedgehog was up just as late as he was. He poured the multicolored puffs into his bowl, which seemed to make just enough clinging noise to wake Sonic up.

A small breeze blew across Tails as he looked up to Sonic, who had dashed off the couch over to the table.

"Sorry, about that." Tails said while setting the box down and began spooning cereal into his mouth.

The blue hedgehog sat down and began to pour himself a bowl. "Don't worry about it. I've been awake for a while and was just snoozin'" he said cheerfully.

They both finished their breakfast in silence and Tails got up and put away everything. "Do you want to watch a movie or something?", Tails asked while walking over to his couch and throwing himself down.

"Sure." Sonic replied with some enthusiasm while walking over and sitting next to him.

Tails just flicked through channels until he found a movie that was just starting and had briefly caught his attention. It was something about a bunch of humans in an ancient time and a ring that really didn't interest either of them after a few minutes. The two watched the movie without speaking, but neither was really paying attention. Tails was using the movie as an excuse to daydream and do nothing, like usual, and Sonic was trying to think of ways to get Tails out of the house and to do something fun.

Three and a half hours later, when the movie had ended, Sonic jumped to his feet and ran around in a circle at supersonic speed for a second. "Man, I can't believe that a movie can go for that long. Wouldn't they run out of film?" Sonic remarked as the credits were rolling.

Tails continued to stare out into space and simply grunted as a reply.

"Yo Tails, I've been thinking."

In all honesty, Tails didn't care, but he was going to humor him anyway. "What?"

"I think we should do something fun today."

Tails appeared to grow bored and leaned back in his seat with his fist under his chin and an irritable expression. "Like what?"

Sonic placed his hand to his chin and tried to think of something to do that was fun. Of course, the only thing that came to his mind was running, which he did not think would appeal to Tails as much as him. "What do you want to do?"

Tails wanted nothing more than to stay where he was and daydream like he had been for the past few days. But Sonic would not accept it, and the young kitsune knew it. This was a good question. What did he want to do?

"Let's go for a run." He suddenly replied.

He did not know why he said it at first, but afterwards, it seemed like a good idea. He liked to move fast, he could keep up with Sonic when he isn't going full speed, and it was a good way to get out aggression.

Sonic was surprised with Tails' reply, but was happy nonetheless. "Sweet! Let's go."

Tails lazily stood from his seat. "One sec." He grabbed a small cup of water from his countertop and walked over to his window where his plant was. The yellow fox lightly drizzled the water into the pot and proceeded to the front door. When he opened the door, he nearly jumped back, seeing another 'Cosmo' in front him.

"Hey, you okay little buddy?" Sonic asked, noticing the young kit stopping in his tracks. Of course, the blue hedgehog had no idea what was going on in Tails' head, or what he was seeing.

Tails lightly shook his head and closed his eyes before walking out the doorway and through another archetype. "Yeah, I'm fine."

They both lined up outside the front door near the water's edge. "Where do you want to run to?" Sonic asked.

A strong breeze blew through the area, causing Tails to briefly turn his head to the side, where he saw 'Cosmo' again. "Dammit" he muttered under his breath, just barely inaudible to Sonic.

"What was that?"

Tails turned his head back forward and quickly replied. "I don't care where we go, let's just go." And the yellow kitsune took off.

Sonic shrugged this off and quickly darted after Tails. They ran side by side for a while, not going very fast, but much faster than any car could go.

"How about we race." Sonic suggested.

"There's no point. You would easily beat me." Tails replied.

Sonic then jumped in front of Tails while turning around, so he was running backwards. "I'll run backwards. That should even it out a little."

What else was there to do? "Fine. Let's go!"

Tails jumped off of his feet and started spinning his tails like a helicopter to propel himself ahead. His speed easily doubled, but that was still not even a challenge for Sonic.

The blue hedgehog kept on par with his yellow friend the whole way, keeping his arms crossed.

"Come on Tails! I said a race, not a walk!" Sonic shouted over the sound of the air rushing past them.

Tails spun his Tails around faster, pushing him even faster, causing Sonic to have to uncross his arms and actually try. However, Sonic was still very far from top speed, and slowly pulled away from Tails, giving him a mocking smirk.

Tails knew now that he would most likely loose. "You are undoubtedly the fastest thing alive." He began to say while a sudden rush of determination rushed over him. "But I'm going to make you work for it!"

The yellow fox pulled ahead of Sonic for a brief moment, but was still matched by the speedy blue hedgehog, still being taunted by his teasing smirk. He was tired. Tired of being second. Tired of being weak. Tired of being sad. And tired of his own self pity. He lifted his head up to see another ghost, smiling mockingly at him.

_"You will suffer without your friends as punishment for your weakness."_

Weakness. It was the reason he was haunted by his nightmares and these damned ghosts. It was the reason why he couldn't save Cosmo, and all of this knowledge infuriated him.

His head bean to throb, his legs and tails started to feel… slow and light. To be driven by hate added with all of things Tails was naturally capable of, was a powerful combination.

Tails changed speed so quickly, it was as if he wasn't moving at all before. Sonic was not at all in his mind, just the abomination in front in of him. It was not Cosmo, it did not feel, and it played on and gnawed at his sanity. Knowing that something that does not exist cannot be touched, let alone destroyed, Tails did not care, and tried any way.

He had left Sonic in the dust and had his arm outstretched to something that did not exist. It simply floated above the ground and moved at the same speed he did.

Determination and hatred pulsed through his veins. The enraged kitsune gained on her ever so slowly. He was about to reach her, but fatigue took control, and his legs and tails couldn't keep up with the rest of his body anymore. Tails tripped over his own two feet and begun to tumble around moving as fast as his Tornado could fly.

Sonic saw Tails trip while he was moving ahead. He knew instantly that Tails was going to get very hurt. It was painful to even watch the yellow fox tumble and bounce across the ground, kicking up dust and grass everywhere. The blue hedgehog quickly dashed over to where the dust trail ended.

"Tails! Where are you bud!" Sonic called out, still being blinded by all of the dust that lingered in the air.

After a second, Sonic heard some coughing coming from his left. He could make out the blurry shape of some sort of animal with two tails lying on the ground.

"Tails!" Sonic ran over and picked up the kit, careful not to hurt him. He then did a light jog out of the dust cloud and gently sat him down on the ground.

It was a very sad sight. Tails had various cuts and scrapes around his body, dirt and grass were stained into his bright yellow fur, along with blood. A very noticeable cut on his body was a crescent shaped one on his left chest; over his heart. The part that really hit Sonic was the tears in his eyes. The kit laid on the ground, conscious, but looking as if he held no emotion or feelings and had a steady stream of tears falling down the side of his face.

Tails had been through so much that he didn't deserve. He was forced to kill the girl that he loved, felt constantly guilty about it and was constantly haunted by it, and when he tried to get out of his house and have fun, fate just pushed him back down.

Sonic displayed a very sad and sorry frown. "Hold on Tails." He said while picking him off the ground again. Surprisingly, Tails didn't move from discomfort or even grunt in pain. "I'm gonna take you to get help."

Sonic took off, running at a decent speed, but not fast enough to aggravate Tails and to make sure he didn't hit any bumps. He knew exactly where to take him: Cream and Vanilla's house. They would be able to take care of him and patch him up.

After a few brief moments of running through the countryside, Sonic arrived at a small house with a beautiful garden in front of it just as darkness had begun to cover the sky. He hastily ran up and knocked on the door. Luckily, it was Vanilla who answered the door. Sonic did not think it would be a good idea for cream to see Tails like this.

Vanilla instantly saw the injured Tails in Sonic's arms and became instantly worried. "Oh my! What happened?" the older rabbit asked with a great deal of concern.

Sonic said the first thing that came to mind. "He fell. I'm not so good a playing doctor, so…"

He was quickly cut off by Vanilla. "Bring him in quickly" she said while moving to the side and holding the door. "Is his still awake?" Vanilla asked after Sonic walked all the way in.

"Sadly, yes" said a small voice coming from Sonic. It was Tails, still awake, and feeling as miserable as he looked.

Sonic laid him down on the small couch that was in the living room that he walked into. Vanilla walked out of the room very briefly to fetch bandages. She soon returned with a first aid kit in hand and a bottle of peroxide. Cream also walked in behind her, putting her hands to her mouth in shock at what she saw. She had seen Sonic and Knuckles hurt before, but never Tails. She had never seen him look so miserable.

"Hold still dear." Vanilla said gently while pouring a bit of the peroxide on a small cotton pad. "This will sting just a little."

The older rabbit dabbed the cotton pad on the large cut on his left chest. Anyone would have flinched a little, especially a nine year old child, but Tails didn't move. Not at all.

Tails wasn't even paying attention to his body. He was too busy being reminded of his guilt and suffering by something that did not, and should not exist. The splinter in his mind was starting to itch, making a ghostly Cosmo appear at his side, next to Vanilla.

_Just leave me alone…_

More tears started to well up in his eyes. Everyone could see, but Sonic had a feeling that it wasn't the burning medicine on his body.

Cream and Sonic watched silently as Vanilla placed bandages over the major cuts and scrapes on Tails body. The process didn't take long, but long enough for the young kitsune to finally pass out.

After everything was finished, Vanilla packed the first aid kit up and faced the two younger creatures. "Now, I don't want either of you disturbing him. Let him sleep." She then walked away, most likely to the kitchen where she spent most of her time.

The two stood there in silence for a while, Cream with a very sad expression and Sonic trying to remain blank. Soon, Cream wanted to know what had happened.

"How did he get like this?" the tan bunny asked with her incredibly high but soft voice.

Sonic was searching for the right words to say. "We were just out running around" he began to reply. "Then something happened. He started to run very fast, fast enough to outrun me very briefly, but then he tripped."

Cream could understand that falling at that speed could be very painful, but how Tails could out run Sonic for even a second was beyond her.

Suddenly, Tails started to move a little in his sleep, and tears continued to run down his face. Cream walked up, got on her knees by the couch and carefully wiped the tears away with her cuff. That calmed him down a little, but he still looked uncomfortable, so Cream began to gently stroke his head, moving his bangs out of his face. This seemed to make him much more comfortable, as he stopped twitching and had a very gentle, natural smile on his face, something that had not been there for days.

The late night and comfort of Tails next to her began to take hold on the small rabbit, and she fell asleep with her arms on a part of the couch and her head resting on them. Sonic couldn't help but laugh slightly, which prompted Vanilla to look at him through the archway of the kitchen. Sonic had a smile on his face as he wagged his finger, indicating that he wanted Vanilla to come over.

The older rabbit walked through and looked around to see that Cream had fallen asleep next to Tails. A very happy and light smile came onto her face. "How cute" she remarked quietly.

"Yeah." Sonic began to say. "Look, I'm gonna go. I'll be back first thing in the morning the check up on him."

Vanilla nodded her head as Sonic began to walk out the door, closing it behind him very quietly. He had no real place to go, so just running around would be fine with him. He dashed off away from the house, going nowhere in particular.

A few hundred miles later, he could barely notice smoke in the sky. The only way he could tell was that it came up in front of the moon. He decided to check it out, in case it was Eggman. But it wasn't. It was a space ship of some sort that had crash landed and exploded. Sonic's first instinct was to check the cockpit, to see if the pilot was alright. When he had jumped up and noticed that it was empty, he heard a familiar voice.

"I guess I'm on the right planet if you're here."

Sonic jumped around to see none other than Shadow the Hedgehog, standing only feet from the wreckage.

He hopped down in front of Shadow. "Woah, is that you Shadow?" the blue hedgehog asked while getting close and examining him, too close for Shadow to be comfortable with.

The dark hedgehog pushed his blue counterpart away with his right hand. "Off course it is, you idiot."

"How did you survive?"

_Flashback…_

_Shadow had knocked out Super Sonic and sent him flying into the vortex that used to be Dark Oak._

_"Sorry, friend, I'm taking over. After all, we wouldn't want you to hurt yourself, would we?" Shadow remarked as he removed the two golden rings from his wrists.__"CHAOS CONTROL!"_

_The entire area was engulfed in light, and everything except Shadow froze. He had to move, he could feel himself start to strain. All he had to do was get Sonic away, and then let the rest of the world resume long enough for the ships to fly away._

_He flew down into the vortex, heading towards the golden hedgehog. He grabbed him by the ankle, and prepared to throw him away, back towards the Blue Typhoon. But something caught his eye; a shining white seed floating in the middle of the vortex. Maybe chaos regeneration had worked, so he grabbed it and placed it in __Sonic's__ hand, the__n closed the unconscious hedgehog'__s hands around it. Then he hurled him directly at the Blue Typhoon._

_The light golden hedgehog now strained himself to get time to resume outside his little 'chaos bubble'. After a few short seconds, they were gone from sight, and now he had to get himself out._

_Not knowing where his planet was from here__ because of being awoken in space__, he decided to go to the only place that he could remember: Cascade._

_He curled up into a ball and started to gain energy to launch __himself__ across space. The feeling of no power was becoming apparent because Sonic had the chaos emeralds and he was now gone. He could start to make out his black __fur__, so without wasting __any more__ time or power, he let himself fly; across time and space to Cascade__After a brief moment of flying at the speed of light, when he was rotating he could see the vortex explode and fill the dark void of space with light._

_End flashback…_

"And that's how I got away." Shadow finished.

Sonic took a brief moment to take all of this information in. "Woah. Good thing you did it. I wouldn't have been able to do that."

Shadow crossed his arms and grew a somewhat cocky smile, very unusual for Shadow. "I know, that's why I did it. You can't do anything right without me. That's two times I've had to save you and your friends."

Sonic was about to agree, but he noticed something funny about what Shadow had said. _Two _times? Last time he checked, Shadow had forgotten about Space Colony Ark.

"How do you remember the Ark?" Sonic asked with a very suspicious tone.

Shadow turned his head to the side to reveal a large red bruise on the side of his head. "I hit my head when I landed on the other planet. I remember everything about the Ark."

Shadow then turned away and started to walk off.

"Wait. Where are you going?" Sonic called after him.

Shadow didn't turn around or stop, but he replied. "To find the doctor."

oOo

_There's chapter 3 for you. Next one soon, I hope. I will now take this time to answer some questions because I'm too lazy to message individual people back. I have not planned any kind of pairing like __sonamy__ or __knuxrouge__ or anything like that.__ However, I may throw in a fluffy scene here and there, but this __fic__ is not centered __around__ romance.__ And I have now realized that the __Cascadians__ were betrayed and bonded to trees on another planet__, and that they are all dead__. Maybe if I get bored enough, __I'll__ find some way to work around it and edit that part in chapter 1. But now I have a question for you: would have even remembered if I hadn't told you?_


	4. Ironic

Ch 4

_I don't have anything particularly important to say about this chapter. It's really just __a filler__, but every story or show has a few of those. The next one's going to have a little more value, but that'll take a week or so. Chapter 4: Ironic_

_**oOo** _

Darkness. It's what surrounds everything around one who is entrapped in a nightmare. Nightmares invade the mind and drive away sleep. Without sleep, the body is weak and fatigued. Tails had nightmares. He lost sleep. And he felt weak.

The yellow fox shot his eyes open, waiting for his focus to improve, but it didn't. Everything was dark, and there was almost nothing to see. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, all the while remembering where he was. He was in Cream and Vanilla's house from last night. He had apparently woken up very early, as it was still dark outside, although the sky was starting to get lighter.

Suddenly a small peep noise came from his side. It was Cream, sleeping next to him with her head on the couch. For a moment he was confused, but it made sense in the end. Cream was the kind of person who would sit by anyone's bedside until they were better.

Tails smiled gently, until he had a chance to look at himself. He was wrapped up in white bandages all over his body. He could feel one on his head, his right arms and legs were completely covered, and he had a massive band-aid on his chest. That particular wound had blood stained through the bandage.

_How could I do something so stupid?_

The young fox immediately dismissed the thought from his mind and lay back down. He didn't have anything to do but sit there, and that was what he did, although he caught himself slipping in and out of sleep. This did provide him the opportunity to day dream though, and before he knew it, sunshine poured in through the living room window and onto his face.

The sun was warm and inviting. It made him want to get up and stand by the window. But his entire right leg was wrapped up, leading him to believe that it was broken. After maybe twenty minute of nothing, his boredom made his try. He sat up like he had before, but scooted up so when he would swing his legs off, he wouldn't hit Cream. He leaned to his side and let his red and white sneakers fall to the ground. Surprisingly, his leg didn't hurt too much. Perhaps it was just incredibly scrapped instead of broken. It made sense as he felt that the wrapping was clinging to his fur with the dried blood that was between them. He stood completely up and felt nothing unusual, so he walked slowly to the window on the other side of the room.

The yellow light reflected off his yellow fur, making him appear to be much brighter than usual. The kit could tell it would be a nice day weather-wise, and maybe even a little enjoyable on his part. The giant yellow ball of fire was only half way exposed over the horizon, but Tails stood there admiring the scenery long enough to see it come up completely. It truly was beautiful, warm, inviting, and gentle. It was everything he hasn't been. He had been ugly, cold, antisocial, and rough, and he envied everything about the sun.

His analogy was cut short when he heard a small gasp come from behind him. Cream had woken up and was startled at the fact that there was no Tails in front of her.

"Don't worry." Tails said while facing the young rabbit. She turned around quickly with sad eyes, but smiled when she realized that he was still there. "I haven't left yet."

Cream got up and walked over to the window next to him. "How are you feeling?"

"Good enough to get up." The yellow fox replied with some degree of enthusiasm.

Cream looked out the window and noticed the sun had just risen completely over the horizon. "I can see why you got up" she said while admiring the scene.

Tails faced the window again. "You should have seen it half an hour ago."

Tails could tell it was going to be a good day. Although he was completely wrapped up, he witnessed a beautiful sunrise and had a short, enjoyable conversation with one of his friends. And his nose could tell that it was about to get even better. He could smell food being cooked in the room next door. Vanilla was an excellent cook, and he was surprised that he didn't hear her earlier. Perhaps she heard him and Cream talking and thought it would be alright to make a little noise.

His thoughts were soon confirmed, as Vanilla walked through the archway into the living room. "I see you two are awake" she greeted with a warm smile. "Come over and have breakfast. I made pancakes."

Cream skipped into the kitchen, followed by Tails, who would have ran if his entire leg wasn't wrapped up. They hopped onto seats with plates of buttery, syrup covered, and steaming hot pancakes. As tempted as Tails was to just dig in, he still retained his manners, and thanked Vanilla before shoving food into his mouth as fast as he could while still not looking like a _total _slob. He looked more like just a hungry kid with a plate of pancakes in front of him, which was essentially the case.

It didn't take long for him and Cream to finish. Tails got up and washed his plate then walked over to Vanilla. Being that she was the adult, she was in charge, and being in the state he was in he wasn't sure if she would let him leave, but he was ready to go and had to water his plant.

"Thank you for everything you've done for me in the past few hours" he said politely. "But I think I'm ready to go home now. I have to get back to work on the X Tornado." At this moment, Tails realized he had been lying a lot in the past few days, but one thing that intrigued him was that he didn't care. He used to find lying a very difficult thing to do, be it seemed he was getting better at it, luckily for him.

Vanilla smiled warmly at him. "You're welcome Tails." But then her expression became a little concerned. "But are you sure that you're feeling well enough to walk home?"

"Yeah, it's just a few scrapes" the yellow fox began to say while walking towards the door. He stopped before opening it and turned to face Vanilla and Cream. "Thank you again, ma'am. Goodbye Cream."

Tails opened the door and walked out, then closed the door gently behind him.

Cream faced her mother, still sitting down at the table. "Are you sure he will be alright mother?"

The older rabbit gave her normal comforting smile. "I'm sure he will be fine."

Tails walked down a small dirt road through the countryside. This whole area outside the major cities was nothing but plains and forest. The road that he was on would only take him past a couple of houses before he reached his. One house in particular was the house of Amy Rose. It only took a few minutes for the young fox to approach the small one person house.

It was indeed small, every bit as small as his own home, but without the massive garage. It had its own qualities; a very large yard, a beautiful garden full of different assortments of flowers (mostly roses), and a few trees here and there.

Although all of this ran through his head, Tails never once thought of stopping by. The only thing he wanted to do at the moment was take these bloody bandages off and have a warm shower. His day had been good so far, but the next event was hard for Tails to decide if it was good or bad.

Amy had been gardening on the far side of the house, where Tails was unable to see until he had walked past. Amy saw him right away though, and she jumped right up to run over and said hi to her close friend. "Hey Tails!"

The yellow kitsune stopped in his tracks. It was another show he would have to put on if he wanted to get anywhere fast. He took in a deep breath and formed his normal, friendly smile. "Hi Amy," he greeted as he turned around.

Once Amy got close enough, her cheery expression turned to one of concern. Although it was understandable, for Tails was covered in red stained bandages.

The pink hedgehog gasped a little. "What happened to you, Tails?"

Now this was a question Tails didn't mind answering truthfully. "I went out running with Sonic yesterday, and I tripped."

Amy walked up towards him and started examining the bandages more carefully. She could tell that Vanilla had probably already helped him and she stopped worrying so much. "How could you hurt yourself this badly by tripping?"

That question was one he didn't want to answer. The only reason he was able to push himself that far was because he was infuriated, and answering this question truthfully would lead to more questions that he did not have the desire or patience to answer.

"The road was really rocky," he lied.

Amy visually accepted this answer and stepped back. "Some of those look like they're pretty bad," she began to say. "Can I walk home with you and make sure that you're okay?"

_Damn it…_

Maybe he should stop trying to be so antisocial and just let someone help him. They were his friends, and they will all eventually know what is wrong with him and try to help him regardless of what he wants them to do. He would do the same for any of his friends.

Of course, all of these thoughts and that whole analogy passed through the brilliant fox's mind fast enough to make it look like he wasn't even thinking, and quickly replied.

"Sure, if you want."

He turned around and started walking, with Amy quickly fallowing. They kept silent most of the way, but after about a mile or so, Amy began to talk.

"How how did you let Sonic drag you into a run?" she asked her question with a tone that seemed like it was already mad at the fastest thing alive. Before Tails could answer, she continued to ramble on, bad mouthing him. "That jerk thinks he can pull you out of your home and interrupt your work just to make you do something that you didn't even want to do!"

"Actually Amy, he didn't make me do anything" the kit began to say. He took a deep breath, readying himself for what he was about to say. "I've been doing nothing but sitting in my house daydreaming ever since we got back from space." Tails' expression and tone became very serious, getting Amy's total attention. "Sonic thought it would be a good idea for me to get outside, and I suggested that we go for a run, not him."

Amy understood immediately. She saw him and Cosmo fall into her love trap, they spent almost all of their free time together, and it was nearly impossible for him to have done what he did. He loved Cosmo, and he had to shoot her. The pain that Tails felt was probably on such a level that she could not possibly understand.

She felt like she should say or do something, but she didn't. She continued to walk next to him, keeping her eyes glued to the ground and her mouth closed. That was probably the best decision. Tails had no desire to be felt sorry for, or have any special attention paid to him. He said what he wanted to say, and he felt somewhat good about it.

After maybe fifteen more minutes of walking, they reached Tails' small home on the beach. Tails walked up to the door and held it open. "Would you like to come inside?"

"No, thank you" the pink hedgehog replied. "I have to get back to my garden." She spoke very politely and softly, knowing that Tails probably wanted to be alone and was trying to act friendly.

Tails gave her a light, friendly smile. "Thanks for walking with me." He stepped completely inside and faced Amy. "See you later" he said with a wave.

Amy waved back and he closed the door. Before he could take off his bandages and wash himself, he had to water his plant. He filled a small cup of water at the sink and gently drizzled it onto the small green sprout. During this, he could tell it was getting bigger. This also sparked his curiosity. What would this grow into? You don't plant a tulip seed and expect a rose to grow. You expect a tulip to grow.

He knew exactly where this train of thought was going to take him, and he quickly pushed it all out of his head and walked away to his bathroom. He started to remove all of the wrapping from his arm, then his leg, then the big one on his left chest. There was a fine, crescent shaped scar. He placed his hand over it and could feel the light beating of his heart. He had a scar on his heart.

"Ironic…" the young fox mumbled.

He then turned around and started his shower. After it was the right temperature, he stepped in and let the warm water run through his fur, washing out all of the dirt and dried blood. It was very relaxing, soothing, and just all around good and he lost himself in it.

Meanwhile on the countryside road…

Amy was walking down the road back to her home. She had been walking for only a few minutes when she came to the forest area of the road Tails and her had passed earlier. As she was walking, she could almost feel like there was someone she knew around.

She looked to the left, and there was nothing. Then she looked to the right, where was a spiky figure in standing with its back turned under a tree. Although it was covered by the tree's shadow, she could tell it was a familiar hedgehog.

The thought of seeing Sonic made her cheer up instantly, and she ran over to give her usual 'breath taking' hug.

"Ouf…"

"Hi, Sonic!" The pink hedgehog greeted while tightening her grip. "I haven't seen you in a while."

She then heard him speak, but his voice came from behind her. "Yo, Amy! What are you doing?"

Amy kept her arms tight but turned her head to see her blue hero standing in the middle of the road, and not in her arms. He was smiling widely, trying not to laugh.

"That is the best question I have ever heard you ask, faker."

That particular voice was slightly deeper and had a sense of aggression in it, which was far from Sonic's gentle, carefree voice.

Amy unhinged her arms and backed away to see Shadow. He was the last person she expected to see. She thought he was dead. But when she snapped back to reality, she felt her cheeks get a little warm with embarrassment. This was the second time she had done this, and was just as uncomfortable as last time.

The black hedgehog turned around and rubbed his chest briefly. He had a slight look of annoyance painted on his face. "With a grip like that, I don't understand how he can ever get away from you."

Sonic walked up to them, chuckling. "I'm right here, Amy" he said mockingly.

Amy spawned her infamous piko-piko hammer and let it drop, right onto Sonic's red and white sneaker. He adding to her embarrassment would not go without punishment. As soon as she heard his grunt of pain, she put the oversized mallet away, making it disappear into thin air.

That little act made Shadow chuckle a little, but he quickly regained his normal frown and started to walk away.

Sonic stopped hopping around and faced the ebony hedgehog. "Where are you going Shadow?"

The red streaked hedgehog stopped and turned around, arms crossed. "Why do you insist on always knowing where I'm going?"

Sonic briefly faced Amy. "Stay here" he began to say quietly. "I will be right back."

He then started to walk towards Shadow. "I want to talk to you about something really quick."

Sonic's serious expression was not something Shadow often saw, so he decided to listen. "And what would that be?"

Sonic had an idea last night after he had spoken to Shadow, but he wasn't sure how he would react to his questions. "I was wondering, sense you remember Maria now, if you would have a talk with Tails." Sonic hoped that mentioning Maria's name would not send Shadow into a fit.

The dark hedgehog's eyes narrowed, but he did not appear to be too upset. "Why?"

"Because you are the only one around who can understand what he feels."

Shadow was visibly annoyed now, and he turned back around to start walking away. However, a blue blur dashed right in front of him. "Don't walk away from me!"

"Get out of my way" Shadow demanded while pushing Sonic to the side, knocking him to the ground. "I'm not going to do anything of the sort. He will get over it in due time." He was still walking away, but Sonic's voice again interrupted him.

"And what? Let him become like you!" Sonic shouted as he stood from the ground.

This was really starting to wear on the ultimate lifeform's nerves. "What's wrong with being like me?"

"You're an ass" Sonic answered confidently. He almost expected to get punched in the face, but Shadow turned around again and began to walk away, as if he didn't care.

Sonic couldn't believe that Shadow would turn his back on an insult like that. "Why you…" he muttered to himself while getting ready to run after him.

But before he could move, he felt a hand grab his arm. He turned to see Amy. "Just let him go" she began to say softly. "You'll just push him farther away."

Amy was probably right. If Shadow wasn't in the mood to fight, then he wouldn't fight. If he wasn't in the mood to help, he wouldn't help. Seeing all of this made the blue hedgehog question why he had even asked. It seemed so pointless.

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

oOo

_There you go. __Next one maybe by next weekend, depending on my mood and a countless number of other variables._


	5. Unaccepted Advice

Ch 5

_I will not lie, this chapter is short. I do not know why it took me so long to do it. __Perhaps because I'm lazy.__ Anyways, this chapter has a somewhat major plot point, as promised. Chapter 5: Unaccepted Advice _

oOo

Few things felt better to Tails than getting a bunch of dirt and dried blood out of your fur. Now the only hard part was getting dry. Most creatures that had all the thick fur that Tails had would take all day to dry, but he was not most creatures. There was a small switch on the wall next to the shower, and he flicked it, sending a glass dome out of the ceiling and around the sopping wet fox. It took no time at all for the air current inside to suck all of the moisture off of him.

Now that his wounds were clean, he could see the true extent of the damage. He had minor cuts around his body, with exception of the very large one over his chest, and his right leg and arm were heavily scraped and cut, but would heal up in a few days.

Feeling satisfied, he walked out into his living room and sat upon the couch. Soft rock music filled the room as he grabbed the remote that turned on his radio.

A thought came to his mind: he had been having a good day so far. Maybe he should do something fun, something safe of course, but fun. What he usually did was work on whatever project he had, however, he had nothing to do really. The X-Tornado has been maxed out, as had the Blue Typhoon.

What else did he do for fun? During his stays at the Thorndyke's mansion, he would usually be found read a book or something. One thing that had always amused him was helping Sonic beat down on Dr. Eggman, but he had been quiet lately. The last thing that came to mind was just hanging out with Sonic and everyone else like they did before the whole chaos control incident that sucked them into Chris' world.

He stood up, thinking that he thought that he knew what he wanted to do. He found all of these trains of thoughts aggravating. He shouldn't have to think hard about what he wanted to do; he should just be able to feel it.

_The look that appeared on Cosmo's face after he had returned her glass flower made him feel very good inside._

_"I polished it up for you" he began to say. "I hope you don't mind.__"_

_"Thank you Tails! I love it!"_

_"I'm glad" Tails replied._

_Cosmo turned back to face the window, but Tails' eyes stayed on her. He couldn't think of the right words to describe her, but he could say it._

_"You're so __beautif-ahhhhh__!" Tails caught himself before he said everything. Good thing Cosmo had her attention to the stars mingling in space, or she would have correctly heard him._

_"Yes, the stars are beautiful" she replied. "I could stare at them forever."_

_Tails couldn't help but chuckle at his luck, and stupidity. __"So could I."_

The yellow kitsune snapped back to reality and shook his head. "That is not an option" he said quietly but firmly to himself.

For a second, he thought that he was still back in his daydream, but his house was still around him. Everything was normal, except for the ghostly figure of a former friend. His anger was starting to rise again, but he quickly dismissed it.

"I will not be intimidated by something that does not exist."

The young fox walked around it and out his door. Maybe a nice walk was all he needed. So he walked aimlessly around the beach, admiring the blue ocean. Another thing he had noticed about himself besides lying more was that he had been paying more attention to the world around him. He had realized that life can be short, and was naturally inclined to enjoy the things around him, even if it was for only a brief second.

His brain was always working and this train of thought lead to another. Why had he seen _her _just now and not at all before? Perhaps only when his mind was set on her was when she haunted him. Perhaps the best idea was to just forget. Not completely, he could never do that, but just keep his mind on other things, like the scenery.

He was now on the main road and away from the beach, but he didn't care. There was no place in particular that he wanted to go, but he was just moving. He came to a part of the road where there was a large number of trees, and he kept walking. He was so absorbed in his thoughts, that he hardly noticed a dark figure walk past him.

He turned his head around to see a black hedgehog with red streaks. He looked exactly like Shadow. Almost as if it heard his thoughts, the hedgehog turned around to face him. It was Shadow. Tails thought he was dead. They stared at each other for a very brief moment, silent.

Tails expected him to turn around and walk away, but he did the opposite. He started to walk towards him.

Tails felt a sense of danger at first, but when Shadow got closer, he could tell that the ultimate life form was not looking for a fight. Soon they were standing right in front of each other.

Shadow was the one who approached him, so Tails waited patiently for him to speak. Eventually, he did.

The dark hedgehog crossed his arms. "You're friends asked me to do something" he said with his normal voice.

After standing there for a minute, looking serious, Shadow sighed and let his arms fall to his sides. A look of defeat was the way he saw it, very uncharacteristic of Shadow.

"I know what you feel" he said softly, maybe even with a bit of sympathy. "The only advice I can give is to not forget her cause. Remember that she died to protect someone."

Shadow took another moment to choose his words. They would be harsh words, but they would be true. "You will feel weak, guilty, and useless for the rest of your life." He let a second pass before ending his statement. It was a little difficult for Shadow to say these words himself. "But the sad part is that you will not be able to do anything about it. It would be better to try and forget."

With that ending statement, the red and black hedgehog turned around and quickly started to walk away, leaving an emotionless Tails.

He couldn't describe what he felt. Maybe it was sadness, maybe helplessness. But whatever it was, it lead to anger, hate, and rage. The muscles in his body tensed, his head began to throb, and his entire being started to feel hot.

"I will… NOT… EXCEPT THAT!"

His statement was loud enough to regain Shadow's attention.

"THE REST OF MY LIFE WILL NOT BE SPENT BEING MISERABLE!

The sight was very intriguing to Shadow. Tails started to gain a very faint white glow, like when Sonic has a power ring in his hands. But the most interesting part was the young fox's eyes. They weren't the same light aqua blue color. The darkened, like a deep navy blue. Wind started to circulate around the area, blowing leaves and other small debris around.

Shadow could also see behind Tails. Sonic and Amy were walking this way, and they soon saw what he saw. However, they were much more concerned about it, and ran towards Tails.

"Tails! What's happening to you?" Sonic asked over the sound of wind blowing around him.

Sonic's words had an effect on the young kitsune, as he started to settle down. The white aura disappeared, the leaves fell to the ground, and the wind dispersed. However, Tails didn't move at all. Sonic reached his hand out and placed it on Tails' shoulder. Tails immediately turned around and slapped Sonic's hand away.

"Don't touch me!" Tails said while walking away. Amy immediately started to chase after him.

Sonic couldn't believe what Tails just did. It was very out of character, and very… Shadowish. He faced his darker counterpart with gritted teeth and clenched fist.

"What did you say to him?" Sonic demanded.

Shadow crossed his arms and regained his normal stature. "I told him the truth."

Sonic was thinking really hard about attacking Shadow, but he had to solve another problem. He turned around and sprinted after Amy and Tails. Amy had been talking to Tails, trying to get him to calm down, but it was useless.

Sonic ran ahead and stopped right in front of the enraged kitsune. "Hold on Tails!" Sonic tried pleading, but Tails walked up to him and shoved him out of the way.

Tails wasn't shouting anymore, but his still spoke roughly. "Leave me alone."

Sonic quickly pulled himself up as Tails continued to walk away. The blue hedgehog didn't know what to do. He thought that he should chase after him again, but he didn't want to start a fight, so he just let his friend leave. Amy looked as if she was about to run after him again, but Sonic quickly told her not to.

"Just, let him go" Sonic said with a tone of defeat.

Amy had her hands locked and a very concerned expression. Sonic was right though, chasing after him would only start a fight. She turned around quickly to see a very apathetic looking Shadow.

"What did you do to him!?" she yelled down the road.

Shadow didn't seem to care at first, but put his hand to his head, as if he felt bad, and turned around to walk off. Amy took one step forward to chase him down, but Shadow was done arguing, and he sped off as soon as her foot hit the ground.

Amy made an agitated growl. "Who does he think he is?"

Tails was far out of view from the two hedgehogs now, and continued to walk down the road. He was heading back in the direction of his home. It didn't take long for him to get there, and he walked right in and slammed the door behind him. The young kitsune calmed down a little, but was still far from happy, and sat down on the couch next to the window that Cosmo's seed sitting in.

_What now?_

He took a somewhat hopeless gaze at his plant. His expression changed suddenly. Not back to angry, but to determination.

The young fox jumped up and walked quickly out of his house, then into his garage. He closed the door and begun work on a new project, something that would change how evil would be dealt with on this planet.

oOo

_There you go. For those of you who get bored enough, I keep a little section in my bio dedicated to the progress of the chapter I'm working on. I update every night at 9 o'clock eastern time, and if nothing has changed, then I haven't made any progress. __Anyways, another one by next week.__Maybe._


	6. Flying Away

Ch 6

_Chapter 6: Flying Away_

oOo

Sonic awoke to the sound of a woodpecker just above him. After Tails had stormed off the other day, he did his usual sound barrier breaking jog around the planet, and then found a tree to sleep in. Judging by how far the sun was above the ground, he had slept in. All day yesterday he wanted to go and see Tails, but he knew that would be a bad idea, and decided to wait. But a day had passed now, and the blue hedgehog thought that was long enough. He hopped out of the tree, landed gracefully on the grass beneath it, and sped off at the speed of sound.

It took only a minute or two for the fastest thing alive to reach the small ocean front home. He was about to knock on the front door, but could hear clanking noises coming from the garage. The blue hedgehog walked around the side of the house to the open garage. He expected to see Tails on the X-Tornado, but was sitting at a small table with a small torch with a suction cup on one end and a hook on the other that he had never seen, a few power rings, and a fake chaos emerald. Sonic knew it was fake because he brought all of the real ones back from space, and hid them.

Sonic approached him like normal, keeping his normal, cheery smile. "What's up, Tails?"

Tails shut off the small torch. "Yo, perfect timing" he said monotonously while tossing a black ring at Sonic.

Sonic was a bit off guard, but his caught it flawlessly and stared at it. Something felt weird about it. It was cold, cold enough to feel it through his glove, and Tails just had a torch over it.

"I need a test subject" Tails said while getting up. His expression was very blank, except for his eyes, which Sonic could tell were holding back a powerful urge to cry, and hadn't been closed in a while. The best word probably to describe him would be pathetic.

Sonic wasn't so sure at first. It just felt wrong. "What is it?"

Tails suddenly had a somewhat mischievous smile on his face, but not in an evil way. It was just not like Tails. "Put it on, and you will find out."

Sonic had no reason not to trust Tails, and he would never hurt him. After a brief moment of examination, Sonic slipped it on his wrist. His hand fell to his side, and started to shiver. The blue hedgehog lifted his arm up, with a great deal of difficulty. His entire arm burned on the inside, but froze on the outside.

He was struggling to keep his arm raised. "Grr… What is… this?"

Tails walked up and removed the ring. "I haven't given it a name, but it's like a power ring, except it takes energy away."

"What is it for?" Sonic asked.

Tails began to lift the ring up, as if he was going to place it on his wrist. Sonic was about to jump forward and snatch it away. If that ring strained him that much, it would pull Tails to the ground. But it was too late, and the black ring was on the young kitsune's wrist.

Tails felt everything that Sonic had, and he lifted his arm into the air, with the same difficulty that Sonic did. After a few seconds, he let his arm fall, and used his free hand to pull the ring off. He walked over to the table and set the ring down.

"It exerts a certain amount of force on a person depending on physical strength" the fox genius began to explain. "I feel the same amount of stress as you do with it on."

That analogy was interesting and all, but it didn't quite answer Sonic's question. "Yeah, but what is it for."

Tails sat back in the chair and began tinkering with a fake chaos emerald and a plain ring. "If you could get it on someone, it could slow them down quite a bit" Tails explained while continuing to work. It was not the true purpose of these rings, but it made sense to someone like Sonic, so Tails continued. "It also should disrupt electrical fields, which would disorientate any robot." Now that he thought about it, that might be true also.

Sonic got it mostly. "So basically an anti-power ring" he said while looking at it. "But why do you need the fake chaos emerald?"

Tails did not hesitate to answer at all. "Fake chaos emeralds have negative energy." Sonic was a bit alarmed at the statement. He knew what fake chaos emeralds did to someone if they were angry. An angry Tails working with negative chaos energy scared him a little.

"Um, are you sure that you should be messin' with that?" Sonic asked, a little concerned.

Tails simply hmphed and continued to work and ignore Sonic, although it was not surprising. Even before the Metarex battle, Tails still usually ignored people when he was working on something. And judging by his appearance, Tails was up all night working on that one ring and it would take a while to get the other ones finished.

Sonic started to back away from the table. "So, I guess I'll let you finish up then" he said while beginning to turn around and walk out the hangar door.

Tails heard him, but didn't say goodbye or anything. He just continued to work on his new 'project'.

After about thirty minutes or so, the yellow, fake chaos emerald that Tails was working with glowed intensely for a minute, then began to dissolve away. He had been expecting it soon, as fake chaos emeralds don't regain energy and will disappear when all of the energy is gone. Tails quickly got up and walked over to the other side of the room where he opened a large file cabinet-like drawer. It was filled to the brim with fake chaos emeralds! There must have been fifty or so lying in that one drawer. He had kept all of the fake emeralds that they had taken from the Metarex, and other ones that they simply found, which turned out to be a lot. Tails just grabbed a random one and walked back to his workspace with it.

Before the yellow fox sat down, he heard a very small tapping noise. Tails looked around the room very briefly, but found nothing out of place, so he sat back down. He set the white chaos emerald on the table and began extracting energy from it with his small tool. The ring was nearly finished, but something in the white emerald caught his eye: two small red dots. They almost looked like eyes, and there was only one person he could think of with red eyes: Shadow.

The blood pounded through his head, and he had that light feeling again. What was he going to do? Why would Shadow be here? Did he want to hurt me? All of these questions flew though his mind. But the one thing that stood out was the fact that Shadow was the one who told him what he knows now. That he will feel miserable for the rest of his life, and now Shadow was here probably to harass him. What else would the dark hedgehog here for?

Tails kept working and pretended not to notice Shadow, but when he was close enough, Tails grabbed the now pitch black ring and turned around while forcing the ring onto Shadow's wrist. Shadow did not expect this at all from Tails and stumbled back, arm hanging limply at his side.

Shadow tried to lift his arm up, and did so barely. "Grr… what is this… DAMNED thing?" he said.

Tails grabbed a large monkey wrench lying nearby and walked up to Shadow with it.

"What… do you think… you're doing?" Shadow asked, his words being strained by the ring at his side. Although, he was much more able to handle it that Sonic was, as he could still jump off the ground onto the massive X-Tornado.

Tails stood his ground, not taking his eyes off of Shadow for a second. "That's what I should be asking you! You come into my home, sneak up behind me, and you want to know what I'M DOING!" Tails shouted, obviously a little angry.

Shadow stood up straight and removed the black ring from his wrist. "I was trying to do something nice" he said while tossing the ring to the ground. "I was going to make sure you weren't going crazy like I did, but I see that I am wasting my time."

Tails loosened up and let the arm holding the large wrench fall to the side. He felt a little bad. Tails set the wrench down and sat back in the chair, but faced Shadow. "Then I apologize" he said loud enough so Shadow could hear him from across the garage. "You just scared me a little."

Shadow jumped from the X-Tornado and leaned against it. "How did I scare you?" Shadow asked in an interrogating manner. "You knew it was me. You chose to stick that thing on me."

_Damn it. He must have seen me jump a little when he got close._

"Please understand, I have never been around you on friendly terms before" Tails said, hoping that he would not offend the ultimate life form. "Whenever you were around me, it usually meant trouble."

Shadow felt something against his heel. He bent down and pulled out a small duffle bag. Shadow could see into it. It was full of small tools, some food, and other various little items that one might take on a camping trip. Tails watched everything thinking and hoping that Shadow would not know about, or do anything about his plan. Shadow took a step forward and picked the black power ring off of the ground. It felt unusually cold in his hands. After a brief examination, he tossed it over to Tails. "Don't worry, I get it" he said while walking away from where he was to the garage door.

Tails had a very mild look of confusion. Shadow was much more complex than any machine. Was he actually caring? It didn't fit his character, but everyone, including Shadow, has some degree of feelings.

"You don't have to leave" Tails said while setting the ring back onto the table.

"Neither do you" Shadow said while turning around again. He took one last, intense glance at the black rings, and then looked at Tails. "Think long and hard about what you are about to do." Then the ebony hedgehog turned around and skated off, and was out of sight in a few short seconds.

Those last words hit Tails. Was what he was planning wrong, and how could Shadow possibly know? Tails sat there for a few minutes, starring out of the open garage door, thinking about what he was going to do.

The young kitsune spun back around in his chair and returned to work on the third ring. This was a very tedious and long process. It involved sucking the negative energy out of the fake chaos emerald and forcing it into the ring with his little tool. Tails had to do that every square inch on the ring and he could only transfer so much at a time with such a small machine. But other than that, it was very simple process, and Tails could easily think of other things.

After another half an hour or so, he had the third ring done. For a test, he placed it on his left arm. As he expected, his arm felt heavy and started to sulk, so he pulled it off, knowing it was working.

The yellow kitsune leaned back in his chair. "Only one to go" he said to himself while wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his glove.

"Only one more what?" Said a small, high voice coming from the other side of the garage.

Tails turned to the garage opening to see a small, tan rabbit standing in the doorway. He let a small smile cross his face. "Hi Cream" he greeted normally.

"Hi Tails" she replied as she walked up to the table where Tails was working. "You left a little early yesterday and I wanted to visit and see how you were doing."

Tails still had minor bruises and scrapes, but nothing really noticeable, except for the scar on his left chest. Cream saw it and formed a small frown on her face. "Does it hurt?"

Tails looked down at it. It was a little pink, as all scars would be after only a day, but it didn't hurt at all. "No, I haven't even really thought about it."

Cream cheered up a little. "That's good" she said sweetly. Her eyes then wandered towards the table that Tails was sitting in front of, and the black rings lying on it. "What are those?"

Tails fallowed her eyes to the rings. "Uh, just another project" he said, pretending that it was no big deal. For some reason, he felt a little guilty lying to her. He didn't feel guilty about lying to Sonic, Amy, or Vanilla, but he did when he lied to Cream.

Cream knew that it had to do with fighting Eggman, and she left all of that stuff to Tails and Sonic, so she wasn't very curious. "Oh, I hope I'm not interrupting you."

"Not at all" he said while getting up, knowing that the emerald that he was working on was about to dissolve. It looked like a lump of coal. "I could use some company." He opened the large drawer and pulled out a light blue emerald and returned to the table. After he had set the emerald down, a grabbed a small folding chair and set it next to his.

"I do need to finish though. But it won't take long and I can work and talk at the same time."

Cream sat down and watched Tails work on the last golden ring. Whenever he touched the ring with his tool, a small part of it turned black. "Why are you turning the ring black? Gold is such a pretty color."

"I can't control what color it turns to" he explained while still working. "It just turns black."

Tails was getting more efficient at this, and finished this ring in only fifteen minutes or so. He felt no need to test it, as all of the other ones worked and he did nothing different with this one.

"Finished" he declared triumphantly.

The young fox opened a small drawer under the table and set everything inside. "Let's go inside" he began as he stood up. "It's starting to get cold in here."

Tails walked over to the door that led to his house. He held it open for Cream to walk through then walked in himself, closing the door firmly behind him. He took a look at the clock and realized that his day went by pretty fast. It was nearing five o'clock, and he had been up all night and day working on those four little rings. He supposed that it was about right. The sun had come up before he had even figured out how to make the rings, but the day still seemed fast.

Cream walked over to the couch ad sat down. Tails went to the sink however, as he still had not watered his plant. After he filled a cup, he walked across the room and lightly sprinkled the water into the clay pot. "I would offer you something to eat or drink, but I haven't bought new food in a while" he said as the cup emptied. Cream hadn't noticed this plant before, and wondered what it was.

"What is that, Tails?" she asked, childish curiosity filling her voice.

Tails set the cup down, then sat down next to Cream. "It used to be a seed that Sonic found…" he began to explain. "when Cosmo died." He said the last part very calmly and gently, not wanting to upset Cream or himself.

Cream saw his light happy face take a sudden drop. Now she knew why he would sometimes stare off into space or frown for no apparent reason. "You loved her, didn't you" she said while averting he eyes to the floor.

Tails was a bit surprised. He looked at her, thinking how she could know. She was still a child, although he was too, but she seemed much more aware and intelligent that a young girl would. He then realized that he had been asked a question, but wasn't sure how to answer.

"I don't know" he said quietly. They were both talking very softly now. "But I liked her… a lot."

After a few minutes of silence, Cream said something. "I have to go" she said while standing up. "I told my mother that I would only be gone for a few minutes to see how you were."

Tails stood up also. "Why don't I fly you home? It's getting a bit late and I can have you home in a few seconds."

"Okay" she said cheerfully. She was somewhat relieved that she didn't have to walk all the way back, as her house was by no means a short walk.

Tails walked out of the house and into the garage, followed by Cream. Tails grabbed the duffle bag that Shadow had left lying in front of the jet, and tossed it by the table where he had been working earlier. Cream saw it but did not ask what it was. They both flew up into the front cockpit, Tails using his tails and Cream using her ears. They buckled in and Tails inched it out of the garage. But when it was clear, he pushed the throttle and the jet lurched forward and into the sky.

The sunset was very near. The large orange sun hovered only inches from the horizon, and all of the surrounding clouds were mixes of red orange and yellow. Tails did not lie; he started to land the jet after only a few short seconds. Would you expect any less from a machine that was meant to keep up with the fastest thing alive?

He landed the jet smoothly on the small road right in front of Creams house. Tails opened the cockpit door and him and Cream jumped out, each landing gracefully using their unique appendages to float gently down.

"Thanks for flying me home" Cream said while facing Tails.

"Anytime" he replied. "Thank you for the company."

Cream smiled sweetly, as she always does. "Good night."

She then felt arms wrap around her. Tails had walked up and was hugging her. Cream was confused for a moment, but thought it must have been about Cosmo.

After a few seconds, Tails said something. "Goodbye." It was a very quiet, almost sad tone.

He then let go and walked away and flew back into the X-Tornado. He jammed the control stick forward and was off.

Cream watched the large jet eventually disappear into the sky. She felt bad, and a little confused. Why did he say goodbye and no good night? It seemed a little odd, as if he wasn't going to see her for a very long time.

She reluctantly dismissed the thought and took a quick gaze at the beautiful sun before walking into her home. It was then that she noticed a small droplet of water on her shoulder. She looked to the sky and didn't see one cloud.

_A tear drop?_

She looked off into the sky, seemingly searching for the X-Tornado, a very sad expression and small tears forming in her eyes. But Tails was already too far away. He had landed is jet, but didn't bother to guide it into the hangar.

Tails walked into his house quickly, grabbed the plant and set it in the back seat of the X-Tornado. He then walked into the garage and grabbed the duffle bag that he had tossed aside earlier and placed the four black rings in it along with a few fake chaos emeralds. Now there was only one thing to do; he pulled a piece of paper out of the drawer and wrote a quick note on it, then placed it on the table.

The young fox walked out and jumped into the X-Tornado, leaving all of the doors in his house open. He jammed the control stick forward, blasting off to wherever his creation would take him. A sudden cold feeling ran down his cheek.

_I don't know why I'm leaving, especially be__cause it saddens me more. But I__ feel the need to, just… get away…_

oOo

_Sorry this one took until late at night, but it was slightly longer and required a bit more thought. A just to let some of you know, because some of the people I have shown this too didn't get it, Tails is running away from home. Sorry if I didn't flat out tell you, but some of you are morons, and I don't want to answer stupid questions._


	7. No Idea

Ch 7

oOo

_ Sorry I didn't submit this earlier,__ but my computer died and was delayed. Unfortunately, I don't have a car and live in the middle of nowhere with no access to other computers. So when I got it fixed, I took a 'sick' day, chilled out for a little, and finished the chapter. I also realize that in my last submission, I may have singled a few of you out and called you morons. It's my fault as the writer if you could not understand it and I apologize. Well now that I have rambled on for the better part of a minute, he is the seventh chapter: No Idea _

oOo

The night sky was very beautiful. One would think that the sky was black, but if you looked close enough, it was really a dark navy blue. Small stars lingered about as did the moon, sitting in the middle of the sky, illuminating everything. There he went again, analyzing the background.

Tails had leaned the seat of the X-Tornado down so he could lay down, and set the jet on auto pilot. He was going nowhere in particular, just in a straight line. Even with the X-Tornado being powered by several fake chaos emeralds, it could only go so fast, and after flying for a few hours, Tails could tell by the various gauges in the cockpit that he was on the complete opposite side of the planet.

_As far away as I can get…_

He lifted his seat back into the upright position and disabled the auto pilot, taking the control stick in his hand. Looking out of the window, he could see no place to land. Ocean covered everything underneath. However, the moonlight revealed a small island in the distance. As Tails got closer, he could see that it was all forest, no lights or buildings.

There was a large beach though, which was where Tails decided to land the X-Tornado. He opened the cockpit and stood on the nose of the jet, observing the area around him. It was a fairly large island, but not too huge. One could maybe walk across it in a few hours or so. The front part that he had landed on was a large beach and the rest of the visible part of the island was forest. It wasn't so much a tropical jungle as it was a regular deciduous forest with many pine, maple, and oak trees.

As he looked around, Tails could see no signs of civilization. No buildings, no lights, nothing. As far as he was concerned, the island was uninhabited, but he would fly over it tomorrow when it was light. Until then, he grabbed the duffle bag that he had packed and pulled out a small steel box with a red button on it. The yellow fox pushed it and tossed the box a few feet away from the jet onto the sand. In a short puff of smoke, it folded out into a one person tent.

Tails couldn't help but smile slightly at his own brilliance. He used to spend all day in his garage inventing small little things that one would think would be useless, or not very important. He saw it in a cartoon once; a tent or small house that expanded from a small box. The convenience of it now tickled him, if only for a moment.

The young kitsune tossed the duffle bag onto the sand and then grabbed the plant from the back seat and flew gently to the ground using his twin tails. He stood next to the tent and the size was now very noticeable. It was only slightly taller than Tails and wide enough to fit in maybe to people. He tossed the bag in and stepped in himself, plant in hand. Everything was pushed as far to the side as possible, leaving just enough room for Tails to lay down. He was very fortunate to have two large tails instead of one, not only because he could fly, but because he didn't need a pillow or blanket when he slept. One tail went behind his head to serve as a pillow and the other laid across him, serving as a blanket. It was actually quite comfortable

His plan for tomorrow was simple: check out the island and start on a real house. He had no desire to sleep in this tent for however long he decided to stay on this 'vacation', and checking into a hotel in a heavily populated part of town would draw some degree of attention. He was not as much as a celebrity as Sonic was, but he was still famous in his own right, and if Sonic or anyone wanted to find him, lots of people would be able to point him out. Being found was not on his list of things to do.

As he thought these things through, his eyes started to get heavy. Once he had finally settled down, he could feel how tired he was, though it was understandable as he had not slept in more than two days. It didn't take long for the young kitsune to fall asleep lying there, curled up in a fluffy yellow ball.

_About 4 hours later…_

Sunlight poured in between the branches of a large tree onto Sonic's face. For a while, he tried to ignore it and go back to sleep, but it was no use. He opened his eyes lazily while being careful not to look directly at the sun, which was now just above the horizon.

The blue hedgehog hopped out of the tree and looked around him. The sun was barely up, the grass was still wet from the dew, and a light, warm breeze blew through his quills. All perfect conditions for a young fox that he knew to be working in his garage. Sonic wondered if Tails had finished what he was working on yesterday, and dashed off in the direction of his friend's house, leaving a blue streak in his wake.

It took no more than a moment for the fastest thing alive to reach the beach front house. As he walked up to the door, he noticed that it was halfway open. Sonic found it a little odd and walked in.

"Tails?" he quietly called out while looking around the room.

Nothing was in the living room or in the kitchen. One interesting thing he noticed was that Cosmo's plant was gone. Sonic thought that Tails might still be in bed and he might have brought the plant up with him. The blue hedgehog started up the stairs and quietly opened the door at the top.

"Tails?" he whispered before noticing that the room was also empty,

Sonic sped down the stair and back outside, where he stopped in front of the open garage. Seeing that the X-Tornado was gone, maybe Tails had gone into town or just on a fly. But as he kept exploring, he noticed the piece of paper sitting on the table where Tails was working yesterday. It was folded with the up side saying 'Sonic' on it in Tails' handwriting.

"Hmm?" he mumbled while picking it up and then started to read it.

_I'll be back someday…_

_Sorry, __Miles __Prower_

"No…" Sonic felt a burning feeling in his chest. This could mean any number of things, and none of which were good. Was going to be gone for a few days or was he going to be gone forever? Sonic dropped the paper and sat limply in the chair near the desk, resting his head in his hands.

_Was it something I did or said?_Sonic felt an overwhelming sense of guilt flood over him. _How could I let this happen? What could I have done different!_

"So I see he did decide to leave" came a deep, calm voice that echoed through the empty hangar.

Sonic lifted his head up and stood to see none other than Shadow the Hedgehog. He immediately formed a very angry frown and even started to growl a little. Sonic thought that maybe whatever Shadow said to Tails the other day had made him leave.

"You knew about this?" the enraged blue hedgehog asked while slowly walking forward.

Shadow crossed his arms, seeming un-phased at Sonic's angry expression. "Yes" he replied, not sounding happy but very serious.

Sonic stopped right in front of Shadow, green eyes glaring at red. Sonic had calmed down a little but was still visibly pissed off. "Why didn't you try to stop him?"

Shadow uncrossed his arms and took his eyes off Sonic, looking at the floor. "It was his decision and I knew he didn't want me to tell anyone." He sounded almost apologetic. "So I didn't."

Sonic lost his grip and punched the dark hedgehog across the face. Shadow stumbled to the side and his head flew back. He regained his balance quickly and wiped his face, seeing a small drop of blood on his glove. The ebony hedgehog dashed forward and grabbed Sonic by the neck, slamming him into the wall. Sonic started to struggle, but Shadow pushed him harder against the wall, getting his attention.

Shadow looked deep into Sonic's eyes. "You have no idea what is happening to him, do you?"

Sonic was getting confused. Why did Shadow care? Shadow doesn't care about anything. After a brief moment of silence, Shadow spoke again. "I didn't think so." He loosened his grip on the blue hedgehog but still didn't let him go.

"He lost someone close to him, and if you are lucky, you will never know what that is like!" Shadow tossed Sonic to the ground. "He is doing what he feels is right. And as far as I'm concerned, he is doing a much better job of dealing with it than I did." He turned around and started to walk out of the garage. "If he wishes to be alone, then let him be alone…" After that statement, Shadow took off, skating out into the distance.

Sonic stood up and watched the orange streak disappear. Maybe Shadow was right. Tails had been through a lot and maybe he did just need to be alone for a while. But his note said '_I'll be back someday…' _That could mean that he will be gone for a while. Tails was capable to taking care of himself, but he was only almost ten. He was still just a kid, but Sonic was confident that he would be fine for a while.

Sonic walked into the house and sat on the couch in the living room. He would give Tails a few days, and if he wasn't home, he was going to go get him. But until then, he had to think of how to tell the others. He knew that Amy and Cream in particular would be upset if he didn't come back soon.

Back on the small island, Tails had been sleeping comfortably for most of the night. However he had recently started to toss and turn. He was having another nightmare.

The young kitsune found himself standing back in Station Square in front of a large group of people. Everything was twisted and distorted with the colors all out of proportion. Buildings tilted over and the sky was a bright white with a large black sun. All of the people looked normal though, and were staring at something behind him, looking terrified. Tails fallowed their gaze to a bridge with a very large eggman missile pierced through it. He could feel eyes on him after a moment and turned to see all of the citizens looking at him. They thought that he would be able to stop it somehow.

Tails formed a frown and shrugged his shoulders. "What are you looking at me for? There's nothing I can do."

Everyone continued to look at him with hopeful eyes. Tails started to feel guilty and compelled to do something. "Sonic would know what to do" he mumbled to himself while looking at the ground in shame.

"Fine" he said while lifting his head up. "I'll give it a try!"

He spun his tails around and took to the sky, heading for the large missile. "Time for me to stand on my own two feet!"

The yellow fox landed on the bridge and used a screw driver to open a hatch on the side of the missile. There was a timer for about a minute and a half left with a few different colored wires attached to it. For a while, he was unsure of which one to cut, knowing that if he clipped the wrong one, he could detonate the missile. But the timer was running out, and he had to make a decision.

Tails was becoming slightly frustrated. "I'm good with technical stuff. I should be able to do this easily."

There was less than twenty seconds left on the timer. He took his cutters and placed them on a large red one. "I think this is it." But there was no more time for thinking, and he squeezed, snapping the wire in two.

Tails heard an extremely loud explosion and everything around him was engulfed in fire. He could feel the flesh being ripped from his bones as the missile detonated. It was going to kill him, all of his friends, all of the people, simply because he picked the wrong one. The only thing on his mind was guilt, and he couldn't hear or see. He just destroyed an entire city. As all of these thoughts flew through him, he couldn't see anymore, couldn't feel anything, and the dreadful explosion noise reentered his ears.

"AHHHHHHHH!"

Tails sat up as fast as Sonic could run. He was breathing heavily and sweating profusely. His surroundings reminded him that it was only a dream, but it still scared the hell out of him. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with quivering hands and stood up.

Everything seemed so real in the dream, but when he thought back on it, it was absurd. He clipped the right wire. It was the same one he clipped when he was still in that world. The missile didn't explode, nobody died, and everything was fine. He shook it off, but he was still shaken.

The young fox walked out of the tent and studied his surroundings. The island seemed much different during the day. The beach was covered in bright colored sand, the trees reflected brilliant shades of green and brown, and the sky was clear and warm. Judging by the sun, Tails guessed that he had slept in.

But now he had something to do: explore the island. He wanted to see what was on it and make sure there were no unfriendly peoples or creatures living on it. He spun his tails around and lifted into the air, heading towards the forest.

oOo

_Don't expect the next one out by the weekend. Sorry, I'm lazy. But I will try to get it done as soon as possible without interfering with my school work or other stuff I do with my time. Now I'm starting to get how long this entire story will be, and I realized that it could easily be one of those thirty chapter ones. Seems kind of long, but when each chapter is only 2000 to 4000 words, it's not as long as you think. _


	8. The Fox's Shadow

Ch 8

_Yeah, this took a while. I'm sorry but my 16__th__ birthday was last Sunday and I was too busy driving around and doing other stuff, so I stayed up all night last night to finish this. It usually does not take me this long to write a chapter and it probably won'__t happen again, s__o don't worry. Also remember that a keep a little part on my bio dedicated to the progress of __**every chapter **__that I update __**update every night, **__so that tells you whats going on. Now that you've heard my list of excuses that I'm sure are meaningless to you, here's chapter 8: The Fox's Shadow._

oOo

Sonic had been sitting on Tails' couch for the better part of an hour. He was drifting in and out of sleep, and when it seemed that he was completely out, a knock at the door made him jump up. The blue hedgehog contemplated about even getting up. It wasn't his house and whoever was there wasn't here to see him. But whoever it was, they let themselves in.

"Tails?" a somewhat high voice that Sonic immediately knew to be Amy Rose called while walking in, followed by Cream.

She saw Sonic sitting on the couch, and would have normally mobbed him, but things did not seem normal. "Hey Sonic" she exclaimed cheerfully, followed by Cream. "We saw the door was open and let ourselves in."

"We wanted to see Tails" Cream began, seeming confused that Tails wasn't there. "He didn't seem very happy last night."

Obviously Sonic was going to have to say something to them about Tails, but he didn't know how to yet. He sighed and placed his hand to his head. Amy got a little upset, thinking it was her making him seem down.

The pink hedgehog formed a frown and hunched her shoulders over. "Oh what? I haven't even touched you yet!"

Sonic took his hand away, lifted his head back and took in a deep breath. He saw no other way but to tell them what has happened. If he did lie, they would find out eventually anyway. And they were Tails' friends too, and they deserved to know. Sonic lazily stood up and stepped away.

He looked at the girls with a very serious expression, and Sonic was not one who was known to be serious. "Sit down, girls" he said calmly while motioning his hand to the couch. "I'll be right back." Sonic did not run, but walked, very limply, to out the door and turned towards the garage.

Cream and Amy exchanged concerned looks. "I think something has happened" Amy said quietly. She of all people knew what Sonic acted like when everything was normal, and if he was this down, something must be very wrong.

Cream had an idea that this had to do with Tails. "Maybe something has happened with Tails" the rabbit replied grimly. This got Amy's attention. "When I came here last night, I asked him what plant he had sitting in his window. He told me it was all that was left of Cosmo, and he seemed very sad."

It was just then that Sonic walked in and up to Amy and Cream, a small piece of folded paper in his hand. He held it out to Amy, who eyed it curiously before taking it. The note only took a second to read, and Amy's face grew very concerned very quickly.

"I think Tails ran away" Sonic said with a sigh.

Cream's heart sank at the blue hedgehog's words. Tears welled up in her eyes and she buried her head in her hands. "It's my fault" she said between sobs.

Sonic stepped forward and sat on a knee. Cream felt him come closer and looked up at him. He had a very gentle, comforting smile and sympathetic tone. "It's nobody's fault. Tails was just upset and wasn't thinking straight."

The blue hedgehog stood up and looked at Amy very briefly. His normal, serious expression returned. "I'm going to look for him" he stated. "Tails is smart, and if he doesn't want to be found, then it will be difficult to track him down."

Cream still looked devastated while Amy tried to comfort her. Amy looked back at Sonic. "When you find him, please be understanding" she asked calmly. "Don't be short with him."

Sonic had no problem being easy on Tails. Shadow was the one who he felt was most to blame. He said something that angered him, and did nothing to stop him from leaving. "Don't worry about that" he said while turning around and crossing his arms. "Shadow is the one you should worry about being hurt." Sonic started to walk towards the door. "He knew about this and said nothing. If I find him, he's the one who's going to get smacked around."

Sonic was out the door and took off, heading in any direction, not knowing where to start.

_Meanwhile back on the island…_

Tails floated above the island with his twin tails, examining the island from up high. The shape of the island was somewhat strange. It had a lake in the middle that he did not see last night, making the island seem like a large, green doughnut. From what he could tell, it was uninhabited. There were no buildings or roads, no lights, nothing but forest and a lake. However, he wanted to get a closer look and dived down towards the lake.

The yellow fox stopped right before hitting the water and looked around, hovering above the blue liquid. There was a small beach to his left with forest covering every other part around him. The island was completely empty.

Now that Tails had explored the island, the next thing to do was to build a house. Not so much a whole house, but just a place to sleep and a roof over his head. Now that he thought about it, this was going to be difficult. He had made his previous home by himself, but then he had access to tools, materials, and friends who could help him. He did not bring any materials, or tools, and no one was here to help him. But there was material on the island, like trees. Wood, essentially, is what most homes were made of, and he could simply knock them over and move them around with the X-Tornado. But regardless of how he could transport material, he still had no way of putting it together to build anything. He would need to go somewhere to get the necessary supplies.

Tails flew back over the trees and towards the front beach where the X-Tornado was parked. He landed near it and sat down on the light yellow sand. As he sat there, he realized that he was going to have to go somewhere and buy supplies. As far as he saw it, Tails had no choice unless he wanted to live in that tent.

The yellow fox jumped up into the X-Tornado and started the engine. He jammed the control stick forward and took off from the island. Now that he had a chance to look at a map, the island he was on wasn't there. He paid no special attention as discovering new land in his world was not that rare of an occurrence. His destination was the closest city, which was only a few miles away.

Once Tails got into view, he noticed it was a rather large city, skyscrapers and all. Once he was just over it, he set the X-Tornado to auto pilot and opened the hatch. There were no ways to park a large jet like the X-Tornado in a city like this, so letting it fly around in a circle until Tails was done would be the best way. The kitsune jumped out with his bag in hand, falling gently to the ground using his dual appendages.

This was the first time Tails had been in a large city since his journey from space. He half expected to see humans walking down the streets like in Station Square, but this world didn't have humans, except for Eggman. Instead of humans, there were all sorts of anthropomorphic animals walking past him. There was no majority in this world. There were many different kinds of animals of all kinds of colors, so Tails barely stood out. However, some people that passed noticed his second tail and recognized him instantly as Sonic's sidekick, but they only gave him a faint smile instead of mobbing him as they would the blue hero. This was all good for Tails, as he didn't have time to sit around and sign autographs.

Tails started walking down the sidewalk, looking for any store that sold what he was looking for. Unbeknownst to the young fox, he was being watched. On top of a large building above where Tails walked stood Shadow. He had been running around and when he saw the X-Tornado streak across the sky, and decided to follow it. The dark hedgehog jumped from building to building, watching Tails like a hawk. If this were a few weeks ago, Shadow would turn the other way and leave it be, but ever since the Metarex were defeated and he remembered everything, he had recalled his true promise to Maria: to help people. And Tails seemed like one who was in need of help.

Shadow watched him walk around for a while before stopping before a smaller building that read 'PAWN' above the entrance way. Tails walked into it, and walked out minutes later. Shadow saw him carrying nothing besides his bag, and guessed that he didn't get anything or that it was in his bag. Tails then walked around some more and walked into a much larger building. Shadow sat on the ledge of the building, waiting for him to come out.

Tails was in that building for nearly half an hour before he came out. It was getting late in the day and there were fewer people around, and as soon as nobody was paying attention, Tails took to the air, heading up the building that Shadow was sitting on. The dark hedgehog jumped up and dashed behind the small area where the stair would reach the roof before Tails could see him. Shadow watched Tails pull a small silver box out of his bag and push a button. For a second, nothing happened. But then the large X-Tornado came swooping down and landed with a screech on the roof. Tails jumped into it and placed his bag in the back, then took off.

Once he the jet was far away enough, Shadow came out and dashed across building to building, chasing after it. It was fairly easy to keep up with, but then again he was the ultimate lifeform. After a moment, the dark hedgehog reached the ocean. Now that he thought about it, Shadow had never come across a large enough body of water for him to drown in. There were no lakes or ponds on Space Colony Ark, and he was unsure of how to swim, but his jet shoes should take care of that.

Shadow, with slight hesitation, jumped onto the surface of the water. His jet-powered skate shoes kept him above the surface and he continued to chase after Tails. Shadow turned his head around to see that the shore was no longer visible, and he began to wonder where Tails was running to. However, his questions were soon answered as a small island came into view.

_He found his own little__ island… How smart._

Tails landed gracefully on the beach and Shadow quickly dashed into the woods as not to be seen. Shadow had decided that he would keep himself a secret and just watch Tails for a little. Whatever Tails was doing was not his business and he should not interfere, but maybe he should just make sure that the kit was alright.

Shadow hopped into a large oak tree and sat, letting his legs dangle to the side and leaned against the trunk. For now, the dark hedgehog had nothing to do. His life was based upon missions; collect the chaos emeralds, serve Doctor Eggman, crash space colony ark into the earth, but now he had no missions to do. Free time was not something that Shadow was used to, so he set up his own mission: watch Tails.

Tails jumped down from the X-Tornado, bag in hand. He emptied the bag on the sand. There were several tools; most notably a large power saw, a hammer, a lot of large nails, and a few bricks of money. At the moment, Tails was surprised that a pawn shop would pay so much for a fake chaos emerald. But they didn't know it fake, or even a chaos emerald for that matter. He now had enough money to buy anything that he needed, and then some.

Another thing that fell out was a small metal box with an outlet in it. Tails picked it up along with another emerald and placed the glowing gem into the box. He then took the power cord for the saw, plugged it in and turned it on. Tails was never one to brag out loud, but the thought of something this useful being created by him was very self satisfying.

Tails took the saw and flew off into the forest. He had already picked the small beach by the lake to be the spot where he would start. There was a larger tree a few feet away, and the young kitsune walked up to it and had it lying on the yellow sand in less than a minute using his new saw.

"This shouldn't be that hard" he murmured to himself while walking towards another tree.

Shadow had followed him into the island and stood upon a very large tree. Tails would not be able to cut this one down, so it would be a safe place for Shadow to stay. He watched Tails continue to work into the day, and eventually dozed off, lying on a branch.

oOo

_Next chapter maybe by next Saturday, but don't get your hopes up…_


	9. What I Can Do

Ch 9

oOo

_I got this one done pretty fast. I hurt my leg and missed two days of school along with a snow day, so I had plenty of spare time. Chapter 9: What I Can Do_

oOo

Shadow never slept heavily, and it was a good thing that he didn't. He heard a large cracking sound, and he sat up and quickly looked for the source of the noise. At first it was hard to see as it was nearly dark outside, but he soon saw a tree fall down. Unfortunately, Tails happened to be underneath it.

The yellow fox was cutting this tree down when it started to fall down on its own, and Tails wasn't quite ready for it. The tree wasn't massive, so it didn't injure Tails, but it was certainly keeping him pinned to the ground. The pressure on his chest was immense and he saw was knocked away, so he couldn't cut himself loose.

Tails briefly tried to push it off, but it was far too heavy. "Damn! Can't anything go right for a change?" he said quietly, but then refrained from speaking as to save air. It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe.

Shadow stood up and raised a brow.

_He's never going to get out of that by himself…_

Shadow sighed briefly and jumped down, landing gracefully as always. He began to walk towards the tree and Tails soon could see him.

"Shadow?" Tails wasn't sure how or why Shadow was here, but it was great timing. He gasped for enough breath to mutter one word. "Help…"

Shadow ran his red eyes up and down the tree and then to Tails. "I think you can do this by yourself" he said calmly while crossing his arms.

Tails had a sudden feeling of helplessness and annoyance. Why Shadow wouldn't just lift the tree off of him was a confusing thought. His face told Shadow exactly what he was thinking.

"Do you remember what happened to you when I talked to you a few days ago?" Shadow didn't wait for a reply and answered for him. "You felt power. Power that was born from your hate of fate."

Tails now formed a painful grimace and showed his teeth. He began to struggle and thrash around. All he remembered was the light tingly sensation that had come over him. The same thing also happened when he was racing Sonic.

"You have to save yourself, Tails. All of your little toys are out of reach, Sonic is on the other side of the planet, and I have no problem watching you suffocate."

Tails was starting to feel enraged. His luck was extremely off lately and it was infuriating. And the fact that someone who was perfectly capable of helping was not going to do a thing. He started to feel light and strong against the log. The kitsune placed his hands below the tree and pushed as hard as he could. The blood rushed through his body and his head pounded.

"You're not pushing hard enough, Tails. If you don't get that off soon, you will surely be crushed." Shadow formed a small smirk as he spoke, trying to seem menacing, although he knew deep down that if Tails couldn't do it, then he would help.

Tails pushed harder than he thought was physically possible for him. The pressure started to feel less on his chest, but his arms burned. His face showed that he was exerting a lot of physical force.

"Not quite there yet." Shadow lost his smile when he noticed that Tails wasn't pushing the tree any further. "You're pathetic! Its one thing to not be able to save the ones around you, buts it's completely sad that you can't even save yourself. It's no wonder that that plant had to die."

If there was an emotional string inside of Tails, it had just snapped. Blood was plowing its way through his veins, and that small white aura began to circulate around him. The gentle breeze seemed to pick up and blew leaves and sand around. Tails felt the weight of the tree turn to nothing in his hands, and threw it to the side. He jumped up and glanced at the tree briefly before kicking it, cracking it into two separate pieces. The enraged fox glared at Shadow, his eyes now a darker shade of navy blue.

"Cosmo did not have to die!" Tails said while breathing heavily.

Shadow uncrossed his arms and regained his normal blank expression. "Then why did she?" he asked quietly.

The white glow that surrounded Tails dispersed slowly and his eyes turned back to the regular aqua color. He fell to his knees and gasped for breath. An immensely sad look on his face that Shadow could not see because Tails' head hung down. "Because I'm weak" he mumbled sadly.

"You are not weak, and you just proved it. Some things just happen that you cannot stop. Cosmo's sacrifice is one of those things."

"But I wasn't strong when I needed to be. Only if I was, I could have saved her."

"You were strong when you needed to be. It's one thing to watch someone you care about die, but I would imagine it is much harder to be the one who pulls the trigger." This got Tails attention and he turned his head to look at Shadow. "In a way, you are stronger than me."

Shadow turned around and started to walk away, but Tails quickly stopped him.

"Wait!"

Shadow stopped but did not turn around.

"I was thinking" Tails began. "When I came here, the main thing I wanted to do was start over and try to forget about everything that has happened in the past few weeks. But another thing I wanted to do was train and get stronger."

Shadow turned around and faced Tails, curious.

"I wanted to be more than just the whiz kid, more than just the brains. I want to fight and actually make a difference, and now that I think about it, I have no idea how to do that."

After a moment of silence, Tails finished. "Will you train me? Will you help me be stronger?"

Shadow crossed his arms and closed his eyes, thinking about it. After a brief moment, the dark hedgehog spoke. "Fine, but you must do everything I say, when I tell you to do it." He turned around and started to walk away. "Get some sleep. You will need it."

Tails watched the dark hedgehog fade into the shadows of the trees. It was getting dark outside and the yellow-orange sunset filled the sky. When you look close enough, you can see the entire rainbow in the sunset. It starts as the normal blue, and then fades to a light green, then to yellow, and red and so on and so forth. One thing that really completed the scene was the moon barely visible in the sky. Tails thought of it as weird that the moon would sometimes be out in the day. It was so out of place, yet so beautiful.

The yellow fox had to shake himself out of his colorful daydream, and reverted his eyes to the ground around him. There were many trees lying on the ground in the general area. He probably had enough to start putting together a house. But then he realized the tree that he had destroyed. It was completely shattered into two halves, like some large creature had come by and stomped on it. Tails felt a sense of satisfaction, but was also terrified. What was he truly capable of?

Tails held out his hands and examined them. He felt a slight tingle throughout his body, but his arms throbbed wildly and he was starting to get a small headache. If Shadow told him to get some sleep, then he should probably do it. He was slightly excited about tomorrow, yet he felt nervous. Tails had no clue what Shadow was going to do, but he was going to have to work hard. The young kit had never before been a part of any physical training, but looking at that tree, he realized that he must have some sort of potential. How he was able to crush that tree, he did not know, but he dismissed the thought and flew off towards his tent. He would work on his house tomorrow, after Shadow was done with him.

_Meanwhile at the shrine of the master emerald…_

"I'm sorry, I haven't seen him" replied a red echidna to Sonic. His name was Knuckles. Knuckles was a brilliant red color with a crescent shaped birthmark on his chest with white, spiky gloves. He was slightly taller and larger than Sonic, and was as strong as the blue hedgehog was fast.

Sonic crossed his arms and sulked his head. "Well have you seen Shadow?"

Knuckles gained a confused expression. "Shadow? He's alive?"

"Oh, never mind" Sonic snapped while holding his head in his hand. "Look, if you see Shadow or Tails, come find me. Okay?"

"Uh… sure. But what is this all about?" Knuckles asked as Sonic was turning around to leave.

The blue hedgehog didn't face him, but answered his question. "Tails ran away. I don't know where, and I know that Shadow has something to do with it."

Knuckles suddenly had a slight tone of sympathy, which was rare. "Oh. Cosmo, right?"

Sonic nodded his head, and then sped off. It really was pointless running all over the planet looking for Tails. There were a million different places he could be and Sonic could not possibly check them all. Tails was smart, and very capable of staying hidden if he wanted to.

Sonic screeched to a halt at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean and Tails' house. He figured the only thing he could do for now would be to wait for him to come back. And if he didn't, then he would try to look some more. This wasn't Chris' planet where every known speck of land was mapped and documented. This world was not as technical and quite a lot of the land on the planet was still undiscovered.

Sonic jumped down from the cliff, landing softly in the white sand below. He walked over into Tails' house and sat on the couch in the main room. For now, he would wait. He had told everyone and perhaps someone would see him or the X-Tornado, but for now, he waited.

_Back on the island…_

Shadow walked through the forest, pondering his recent behavior. Now that he had recalled everything, he was becoming confused of who he really was. There was the Shadow who was born on the Ark, and then there was the Shadow who was born in Doctor Eggman's spaceship. He remembered Maria as well as Molly. They were both good people, who wanted nothing more than for other people to be happy. And that was Maria's real request.

The ebony hedgehog jumped into a nearby tree near the beach. He could barely see the X-Tornado on the other end, and then a small moving dot that he guessed to be Tails. They young fox was very similar to himself. They both shared a saddening past, and are both are seeking to do something about it. At first, Shadow tried to kill everyone, and then he ended up saving them. He had a suspicion of why Tails wanted to be stronger: he wanted to try to prevent the same thing from happening to anyone else, and he wanted to be able to protect the rest of his friends. Shadow felt the same way, just not as intensely.

But now Shadow had to think of a plan. He had no idea how to train someone else. When on the Ark, he did receive some training, but he was already naturally powerful. He was born to be powerful. The black hedgehog supposed that he could train Tails the same way that the scientists aboard the Ark did, and maybe teach him about chaos control. Not many people were even capable of learning chaos control, but Tails was one of the smartest people Shadow knew. The fox was even on par with Doctor Eggman, and possibly Professor Gerald. He should be capable of learning it, and maybe even take might it a step farther.

Shadow sat down and leaned against the trunk of the tree. This was one way of realizing Maria's wish; helping one person at a time. It was slow, but it still counted. Besides, even though Maria wanted him to make people happy, that didn't mean that Shadow cared. And it was an impossible feat. Him, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and everyone else put together could not possibly save everyone. Shadow could see Tails walking around before deciding to close his eyes and falling asleep.

Tails had a small water bottle in his hand and drizzled a little water onto the small plant in his tent. The young fox had been working all day but wasn't tired yet, so he jumped up onto the wing of the X-Tornado and laid down. The sky was completely dark now, and small bright stars dotted across the area, along with the moon.

It didn't take long for the young fox to get drowsy. Shadow had told him to get some sleep, but he didn't know if he would have another nightmare or not. It made him scarred to go to sleep, but that is not something you can always control. He was exhausted from pushing that tree off of him and working all day before hand. Soon, Tails lay there, fast asleep under the night sky.

oOo

_The next one will not be out by the weekend. __Maybe in the middle of the week or possible not even until the next weekend.__ Anyway, I'm not sure, but it will come._


	10. A New Reslove

Ch 10

_Yeah, __it's__ been 3 weeks since __I've__ updated, and I apologize. But with the holidays and other stuff going on, I didn't have much time to be writing. Not to mention that __I've__ been playing with my new Christmas toys quite __often :/__ But I've finally grown bored of them and sat down to write. So here's chapter 10: __A__ New Resolve_

Tails slept like a baby all night. He sat up on the wing of the X-Tornado and squinted his eyes. The young fox recalled no nightmares, which was strange. Why did he have nightmares some nights but on others he didn't? Perhaps they only happened when she was on his mind. The kitsune dismissed the thought, not wanting to bring her up in his mind, and tried to look around. The sun was right in his face and he instinctively covered his eyes with his hand. After his eyes had adjusted, Tails could clearly see everything around him. The island was beautiful and bright, with the exception of a black hedgehog standing a couple of yards down the beach, looking out at the water.

Tails just looked at him for a moment. The dark hedgehog looked so out of place standing in the sun. Shadow didn't move an inch, until he realized that Tails had woken up. He turned and faced Tails, while waging his finger, indicating that he wanted Tails to come over. Tails jumped to his feet and flew down the beach, stopping near Shadow.

"I did some thinking last night about how to train you" the obsidian hedgehog stated while facing Tails. For however long Tails knew Shadow, his red eyes had always scared him a little. But now, they seemed normal, less intense, and maybe even a little friendly. You would be surprised how much you can tell about a person when you look at their eyes.

Shadow did have a revelation of sorts when he helped stop Space Colony Ark from crashing into the earth. Perhaps that now he remembered it, he had become a better person. More understanding and less antisocial. Or that's what Tails thought.

"Really?" Tails replied. "What did you have in mind?"

"Do you know why you were able to destroy that tree last night?"

Now that he truly thought about it, Tails had no clue. "I got angry" he replied unsurely.

"We will work to your strengths. Fighting according to your strengths is very beneficial. Sonic uses his speed to his advantage as Knuckles uses his strength. You strength is intelligence. You were able to move that tree because, despite being physically weak, you have enough mental awareness to push your body farther than it can naturally go."

Shadow just then remembered that Tails had an extra appendage. "And your tails are a good advantage as well" he said while studying the waging yellow fluffs behind him. Something like the ability to fly with those seemed like it would not be possible.

This wasn't news to Tails. He knew he was smart, but intelligence having to do with power like that seemed unbelievable. "So how do I work to my strength?" he asked, growing ever curious.

Shadow seemed to be reconsidering his plan from last night. "I think you would be capable of learning chaos control."

Tails was starting to think that Shadow was thinking too highly of him. Chaos control was something that only Shadow was known to do. Even Sonic couldn't do it on command. "Are you sure?"

Shadow crossed his arms and formed a mischievous smirk. "We will find out, won't we? Go get one of the fake chaos emeralds from your bag."

Although doubtful, Tails did what he was told and retrieved a fake emerald from his bag. He returned to Shadow and awaited further instruction.

"What does that chaos emerald feel like?"

Tails looked down at it for a moment, trying to figure out what he felt. Chaos emeralds always felt weird, but he was never asked to describe it. "It feels warm, but also cold. It feels heavy, but also light." Tails was searching for a word to describe this feeling, but it didn't come. "I don't know what this feeling is."

Shadow figured as much. To this day, he didn't know how to describe the feeling, but he did know what it was. "That is power."

"Power?"

"Yes, power, energy, chi, whatever you want to call it. Now, to use chaos control, you have to let this power into your body through your hand, and then push it out into the area around you."

Shadow took the emerald from him and disappeared. Tails looked around for him but couldn't see him anywhere. "Once you learn to do it…" Tails jumped around to see that Shadow had reappeared right behind him. "… you can manipulate the fabric of space and time to your liking" he finished while handing Tails the emerald back.

Tails understood what he had to do, but doubted that he could do it. He looked down at the emerald again and tried to pull the energy into him, first by squeezing it, and then by stiffening his arm. Nothing was working.

Shadow saw what he was doing wrong and corrected him. "You don't use your body. Use your head."

Tails calmed himself down and closed his eyes. He loosened his grip on the emerald and inhaled deeply. The warm feeling from the emerald started to creep into his hand and wrist. Perhaps the right way to do it was to let it flow in. But it would only come so far, right about to his elbow. After a moment of no progress, he opened his eyes and looked at Shadow.

"It stops just under my elbow" Tails said with a hint of frustration.

Shadow crossed his arms and redisplayed his normal frown. "Keep trying. Just let it come over you." The black hedgehog then started to walk away. "It could take you two minutes or two years to figure it out, but we will move on once you do. I don't care how long it takes."

Tails watched him walk into the forest and disappear. He was mildly frustrated, but he was used to not getting things right the first time. It happens often when you're into mechanics. The only thing to do was to try again. He sat down cross legged in the sand and closed his eyes again.

Tails certainly was determined. He had been sitting in that same spot for at least two hours. With every passing moment, he got more and more frustrated, and started to question this method. He did not push that tree off of himself by being calm. Tails had the feeling at the same place as before, and instead of letting it come, he tried to pull. All of the young fox's focus was on the emerald in his hand and trying to pull the energy out of it. This did nothing but make it fall back out of his hand and into the emerald. He was back at square one.

Tails cursed under his breath as he tossed to emerald to his side. He then stood up and looked around. "I still have other things to do" he said to himself as he headed off towards the forest. "I'll try again later."

_Back at Tails' home…_

Sonic's eyes shot open and quickly looked around the small house. He had fallen asleep on the couch and was hoping that Tails would have come home by now. There was no one here besides him and he would have woken up if Tails had walked in. The blue hedgehog sighed and rested his arms on his legs, staring at the floor.

What was he to do now? It was impossible for him to go out and find Tails by himself, but there was nothing else to do. Tails was like his brother, his best friend. And he would keep looking for him until he was found. He was going to try even if it took forever, and he wanted to have a 'talk' with a certain black counterpart.

Sonic jumped off of the couch and dashed out onto the beach. He picked a line and ran in that line, hoping that it would lead to Tails. It was just as likely as any other line, so he took off without a second thought.

Five minutes and five hundred miles later, he screeched to a halt in the middle of an open field. Something caught his eye as he passed. Something shiny and metallic, almost like a robot. Sonic's suspicion was confirmed as Dr. Eggman appeared out of the sky in his hovering eggmobile. They metallic surface of the craft could be seen a mile away with its bright glint.

Sonic crossed his arms and tapped his foot impatiently, waiting for the doctor to declare his never followed out victory. Usually Sonic would jump at the chance to beat down on Eggman, but he was trying to do something much more important. The blue hedgehog had no real desire to fight with him right now.

"Why, hello Sonic!" the spherical human greeted sarcastically as he approached his long time nemesis. "It's been too long."

Sonic had a very visible scowl, not at all amused or excited. "Not long enough."

Eggman continued his little act and tried to act sad. "Now that's not a way to treat an old friend."

"What do you want egghead?" Sonic practically yelled at him while keeping his current stance of crossed arms and a frown.

Eggman grinned his normal, evil grin and pressed a button on the control panel of his eggmobile. "I have a surprise for you." Suddenly five silver robots dropped from the sky, landing in line before their master. They were in a somewhat humanoid shape, but had no head and a large mini gun for a right arm. "My new F-Series robots" he introduced proudly. "They are far more advance than the previous E-Series and they can tear you limb from limb!"

As if on cue, all of the machines aimed and loaded their guns, making loud clicking noises as they did so. Sonic got into fighting stance ready to pounce. "I don't have time to play around with you Eggman!"

The doctor let out an irritable growl. "You don't have a choice!" He then barked orders out for the robots to attack.

They all charged forward, being propelled by jets on their backs, and fired rounds at the blue hedgehog. Sonic jumped up into the air, dodging the bullets and began to spin forward at incredible speeds towards the lead robot. He spun so fast that he appeared to be only a blue ball, and he homed in on the closest one, plowing into it at a very high velocity.

Sonic felt the machine bounce off of him and saw it fly and skid across the ground. After the dust cleared, Sonic saw it speed out at him, attempting to run him over, but the blue hedgehog just caught it and rolled to the side.

Sonic took a quick look at the robot that he thought he had destroyed, when in reality, it wasn't even scratched.

"Huh?"

Doctor Eggman's high pitched laughter was heard. "Don't under estimate them!" he called out towards Sonic. "They are made from a very dense material. You won't be able to beat them that easily!"

_Hmph__ Not only did __Eggman__ decide to screw with me during a bad time, but he had to a__ctually think of something good!_

Sonic got ready to charge them again and was thinking of a way to beat them. From what he could see, most of their bodies were covered in armor. "This is going to take a while" he mumbled to himself, then charged at them.

_A few hours later…_

Tails stood back at the construction area of his new home. It was difficult to see through the dark sky, but he had gotten a lot done. There were four walls made of cut logs that he had nailed together, but had not yet moved them up and connected them. The young fox didn't know how to get them up at the moment, but he would figure it out eventually. Now what to do?

Tails sat on one of the walls and rested his chin in his hands under the moonlight. His mind had been so busy in the past few days, he just wanted to rest. The young fox found himself daydreaming, staring into nothingness, his mind completely blank, except for one particular alien girl. Tails then snapped back to reality, realizing that he had just been sitting there for quite a while. Perhaps it was time he went to sleep.

He stood up to walk back to his tent, but stopped immediately. Almost as if jinxes really existed, there she was, standing calmly, blankly, and without emotion. She really did appear only when Tails was thinking about it. For the past few days, he had been able to suppress any thought of her, but with his mind wandering, it wandered to her.

A grim and depressing look came onto the young kitsune's face. Why must fate tease him so? Why must he be constantly reminded of the terrible thing he has done? But those questions could not be answered, and the yellow fox broke down and fell to the ground, wrapping his tails around himself to hide. All of the misery and tears that he had been able to suppress in the past few days burst out now, in the middle of nowhere with no one to comfort him.

After the larger of the sobs had stopped, Tails still continued to lay there letting the tears freely flow down his face, curled in a yellow-orange ball. However, his mind had become active again, desperately seeking for an answer to his problems, but he found none. "What's the point of all of this!?" What's the point of doing anything if it makes me feel this way!?" Tails was asking himself, becoming angry that he didn't have an answer. "What's the damn point!?" The young fox screamed out loud while slamming his fist into the ground.

"The one who can answer that question…" Tails jolted in surprise at the voice. He had been caught crying and didn't look up at him. "… is truly wise." Shadow had been sitting in a tree nearby and watched everything.

That was not a satisfying answer to Tails, but he accepted it and stopped crying, but had stayed on the ground looking down. Shadow grabbed the small fox by the arm and pulled him off of the ground, then looked into his eyes. Tails still looked at the ground, but his face was visible, the puffy red eyes and wet muzzle completely exposed him. He still hung limp and if Shadow let go, then he would have fallen down again.

"You have to learn to put it behind you." This got a small amount of reaction from Tails, and he looked back at Shadow. "If something hits you, then wipe the blood from your chin, and get on with your day."

Shadow let go and Tails fell to the ground, but on his feet. Tails didn't know what to say or how to react, but it didn't matter as Shadow turned around and jumped back into the trees, disappearing from sight in the darkness.

Tails let out a sigh. "Maybe he's right."

The young fox then started to walk away from the area and towards the beach. Little did he know, that phrase would be a driving force that would take him farther than he thought never possible. With new resolve, Tails made a silent promise to himself to never cry again. He would never forget Cosmo, and may feel bad the rest of his life about what had happened, but it would not be shown.

Tails' moral may have gone up slightly, but Sonic's had taken a dramatic drop. The blue hedgehog limped into the front door of Tails' house and collapsed onto the couch. The moon light coming through the window showed that he had been beaten in his earlier battle. Badly beaten. There was a multitude of scratches, bruises, and cuts all over him.

_Flashback…_

_The five-some of robots had been constantly __perusing__ Sonic, easily brushing off his attacks. They were slow machines, but it didn't matter. Sonic simply could not destroy them. Their battle had arrived near a cliff, where Sonic was cornered._

_Sonic knew that he could not run around them now to escape because he was already exhausted. Jumping would be the best idea, but they could fly, so it would still be dangerous. The blue hedgehog braced himself to start running, __then__ dashed forward. The machines open fired, but Sonic was able to evade those, and jumped as high and as far as he could over them. However, the lead robot used its jet to propel itself up, knocking Sonic out of the air and over the cliff._

_The impact of being hit hurt enough in itself__, but the fall off of the cliff topped it off. Sonic curled into a ball, trying to avoid some of the damage that he received from passing tree branches and other various objects. After what seem like forever, the blue ball slammed into the ground with a loud crash._

_After a moment, Sonic unrolled himself and flipped onto his stomach. "What… the… hell…?" Sonic said in between coughs._

_He felt like passing out, but __Eggman__ could be heard barking orders for his new contraptions to go after him. Sonic forced himself onto his feet and started to run as fast as possible, which wasn't very fast, in the opposite direction._

_End flashback…_

"I could have won" Sonic whispered. "Only if…" But he finally passed out before he could finish.

The real thought in the hedgehog's mind was that he could have won if Tails was there. Not many people noticed, but Tails had saved Sonic on numerous occasions and was frequently the reason that Sonic escaped injury. Tails would always show up at the right moment to catch Sonic in his plane, or toss him a power ring. Sonic could have torn through those robots if he had a power ring, but Tails was not there to give it to him. And he wasn't there to catch Sonic when he was falling.

Now Eggman had finally won a battle against him. Sonic and Tails were the only ones who could stand up to the evil doctor, except Knuckles or Shadow, but neither seemed like the hero type.

With no one able to stop Eggman, what was to stop him from establishing the Eggman Empire? Tails decision to disappear may not just affect his friends, but the entire planet.

oOo

_Finally, I got to a part that starts up the main adventure of this __fic__! Things from now on are going to get a little less sad and a little more action-__ee__Next update maybe by next Friday, depending on whether or not I decide to study for midterms._


	11. 5 Years Later

Ch 11

_I had a lot of extra time on my hands. Being grounded but having access to a computer as long as I'm doing something that looks like homework has given me plenty of time to write and think. __Here's chapter 11: 5 years later. Now before you bombard me with question__s__ regarding ages of __characters__ and whatnot,__ I have a little explanation showing my logic at the end of the chapter. We have final stopped the foreplay and gotten to the real deal! This fiction has only begun!_

oOo

It was dark on the island where Tails lived. Not late at night but early in the morning. A figure lay under a small sheet in a small bed, two large, bushy tails hung out to the side. The house was small, and from what one could tell, was a one room home. Who ever lived there had no real desire to keep the log cabin decorated and was very plain. The only furniture was two beds on opposite sides of the room, one occupied and one not. The only thing of real color in the room was a very large, red bud in a large clay pot.

The two tailed figure started to move around slightly. It was awake, but was too lazy to get out. Dim sunlight started to trickle into the room through an open window.

Suddenly, the front door flew open, letting fresh sunlight pour in. Whoever had barged in had no intention of letting the creature laze about.

"Get up, Tails!" The voice was that of Shadow the Hedgehog, who waited briefly for the two tailed creature to get up. When it didn't, Shadow stepped forward and pulled the sheet off, exposing a teenage yellow kitsune.

"Alright!" Tails lazily shouted, then quickly stood up. "I'm up. Let's go."

Tails fallowed the expressionless Shadow outside. Then the both broke out into a run through the forest. Shadow elegantly skated and jumped off of trees. Tails kept close behind, moving with just as much grace, but propelled himself forward using his tails. They both burst out of the forest and skidded to a stop on the soft white sand of the beach.

The sun was fully up, exposing Shadow and Tails fully. It had been five years since Tails had lived on that island, making him fifteen, and he had matured very much over that time. He had gotten considerably taller, very tall for someone on his planet, but would come up short on the average human. His once round body was now thin, sleek, and toned, making the young fox look very lean. His arms and legs were thick with muscle, but he was not extremely buff. The three small bangs on his forehead and grown to five very thick, long, golden yellow ones, along with more, thick head fur on the rest of his head. Tails kept his attire of white gloves, but had added black wrist guards similar to Shadow's red ones with his custom black rings placed around them. The same rings were around his ankles along with matching black ankle guards above black running shoes with a white strip and grey bottom that had small blue gems imprinted on the toe and heel.

The blue gems were actually uniquely cut fake chaos emeralds that, with some of the young genius' own mechanical wizardry, made the bottom of the shoes totally frictionless. He simply had to arch his feet to turn them on. The purpose was to make it so that Tails could use his tails to push himself forward and slide along the ground with no resistance, eliminating the need to use extra energy to keep himself above the ground. This actually allowed him to move much faster.

Shadow also had grown over the years, but not very much. He looked very much the same, but his quills were slightly longer and thicker. He had grown very little, and was barely as tall as Tails now. Tails had always thought that Shadow was immortal and ageless, and when he asked him why he was aging, he replied "Professor Gerald once told me that I will age until I am in the physical prime of my life, and from that point on, I will never age again, and live forever".

"What are we going to do today?" Tails asked. His voice had also deepened, but not intensely. He certainly didn't sound ten anymore.

"Just our daily thing" Shadow replied, getting into fighting stance.

Tails did the same and formed a smirk on his face. "Okay. Let's go!"

With that, they both dashed forward at each other, ready to fight. They made contact and started battling each other, neither hesitating to land a good punch.

As Tails had changed, so had everyone else in the world. Sonic had taken up residence in Tails' old home, usually staying the night there or lounging about waiting for Tails when he wasn't trying to stop Eggman. Even after five years, Sonic still waited for him, and even went out and looked for him on occasion. The rest of Tails' old friends had come to the conclusion that he was probably dead. Five years of being away without speaking to anyone can make people think that.

Unfortunately, when Sonic was battling Eggman, he usually lost. Every since Tails had left, Sonic was fighting alone, and over the years, Eggman had gained much more power over the world. The doctor controlled maybe half of the planet, and had enslaved people by the cities. By the time Sonic had gotten Knuckles to help him fight, Eggman had gained too much power, and the duo was unable to stop him, making Knuckles give up the hero business quite quickly.

Sonic's appearance had showed the years of battles and defeats that he had suffered. His quills were long, droopy, and unkempt. His body had become more toned and buff because of all of the exercise he got from fighting, but various scars covered him. There were still fresh bruises and cuts on his face. The ego that Sonic once had was completely diminished. Instead of being carefree and unbound by others, he had gotten much more serious. Not only did he have a responsibility to protect as many people as he could, but he was unable to help everyone, and was often wrongfully criticized.

When Sonic was doing nothing but staring at the floor, he heard the front door open and close. He looked up to see none other than Amy Rose, now eighteen years old. She wore the same red colored dress, but it was slightly longer and had sleeves that came to her mid-upper arm. The red headband remained in her pink quills, but now it had a small artificial flower attached to it. Her attire was complete with a small, red handbag that hung from her right arm.

"Hi Sonic" he greeted calmly. Amy had matured very much, and did not often pester or beg Sonic for a date. She resolved to just talking with him and occasionally would hit on him, but they had remained only good friends.

"Hey Ames" the blue hedgehog replied, then he resumed gazing at the floor. He was trying to hide his face, which held new cuts and bruises from a recent battle. Tails was usually the one who would fix him up and make sure it was alright, but Amy had taken over, and Sonic always felt a sense of vulnerability when Amy would try to help him.

But Amy could see clear as day. She walked over and sat next to him then examined his face. Sonic turned his head away.

Amy frowned, knowing how Sonic was but she knew what had to be done. "Come on, Sonic. Let me see."

Sonic reluctantly replied and faced her. Amy pulled out a small handkerchief from her handbag and wiped some blood and dirt away. "Did you beat him this time?" she asked, trying to break the awkward silence.

"I haven't beaten him in five years" Sonic replied monotonously.

Amy finished and tossed the handkerchief away. "You'll get him sooner or later. People like Eggman can't hold onto their power forever."

"Maybe. But I don't see him loosing it soon enough." With that, Sonic stood up and started walking.

"Where are you going?" Amy asked curiously.

"Eggman is trying to take over a large city not too far from here. I have to try and stop him."

Amy watched the blue hedgehog walk out the door and dash away. With every passing day, it seemed that Eggman's empire spread farther. Amy was really starting to worry about Sonic's safety. Eggman used to just try to defeat Sonic, but now he was trying to exterminate him.

_Please be careful…_

Tails and Shadow were still engaged in a heated battle. Ever since Tails had successfully performed chaos control a few years ago, Shadow's training had escalated to other techniques, such as the chaos spear and actual combat. Tails wore his black rings all the time. Just performing everyday activities with them on was exercise, but actually training with them was a real workout.

Tails evaded a roundhouse kick by back flipping, then dashed forward in the air and attempted to hit Shadow from the side. Shadow spun out of the way and kicked Tails in the back, knocking the foxteen into the white sand. The black hedgehog then threw a chaos spear at him, but Tails rolled to the side and fired his own, distracting Shadow just long enough for him to get up and punch him across the face then in the stomach. Tails was about to jump kick him in the head, but Shadow recovered and jumped away.

The two stayed a few paces apart for a minute, just taking a quick break to catch their breaths. After all, they were only training, not trying to kill each other.

Shadow was visibly less tired, but he still had a fair share of bruises and scrapes. "Let's step this up!"

The black hedgehog removed the rings from his wrists and threw them to the side. Tails responded by removing his also, and getting ready. Only recently had they started taking them off during training. He claimed that now that Tails was physically strong, he should be practicing technique rather than intensely exercising.

But this was usually just a survival game for the both of them. Shadow became extremely powerful, far stronger than Tails, very briefly when he removed them, and Tails' strength increased also, but his agility and speed increased dramatically. Tails could not quite beat Shadow in a straight race, but he was far more agile and could change direction and dash short distances with much more grace and speed.

Shadow began with a homing attack, heading right at Tails. Tails dashed to the side and behind him then kicked him away. Tails' speed was crucial here. If Shadow did hit him with one of those, it would hurt a lot.

Tails fallowed the balled up hedgehog into the air, caught him, and threw him to the ground like a base ball. Shadow stopped spinning and landed firmly on his feet, then fired an entire wave of chaos spears at him. Tails dodged them all by moving from side in the air or out running them. Tails prepared one of his own and heaved it at Shadow.

This was one of Tails' favorite techniques, because he was the only one who could do it. Once Shadow jumped out of the way, the yellow light turned around and fallowed him. Although Shadow was much more powerful, Tails had much more control and knew how to manipulate his own energy. The spear continued to fallow Shadow around until he dashed up to Tails and knocked him out of the air. Tails lost focus of his attack and fell to the ground with a thud.

Tails immediately tried to jump up, but he felt a foot on his chest. Shadow had him pinned down, chaos spear in hand, ready to fire.

"Checkmate" Shadow declared.

Tails sighed and laid back down. "Okay, you win. Could you get off of me now?"

Shadow did so and helped Tails up. The obsidian hedgehog always had a closing piece of advice after every spar. "You must learn to focus on your attacks and yourself. Chasing me with that chaos spear is useless if it leaves you vulnerable."

"Yeah. I'll remember that" Tails said while picking Shadow's rings off of the ground and handing them to him. Shadow took them and pounded fists with Tails. The two had spent much time together and each had changed in a way. Tails became more serious and maybe slightly cynical, but still remained the light hearted fox that he always was. Shadow had become more sociable and has even openly call Tails a friend. But he still likes to be alone sometimes and is not nearly as talkative as Tails was.

As Tails retrieved his own rings, Shadow spoke to him. "I went on a run this morning. Doctor Eggman is about to take another city."

Tails looked back at him seriously. "Is that so?"

"Yes. The good doctor's empire is becoming more powerful with every passing day. Even your old friend Sonic is incapable of stopping him for much longer."

Tails stared at the ground. Being reminded that Sonic continued to fight without him and constantly loose made him feel guilty. But for the longest time, the teenage kitsune didn't think that it would make a difference if he returned to help.

"I think it is time that we step in" Shadow exclaimed. "It won't be too long until Doctor Eggman is in control of the world. Then, nothing can stop him."

Tails sighed. "I agree, but I don't know how. They probably think I'm dead by now. They'll probably hate me if I go back."

"You could be right. But then again, they could welcome you." Shadow started to walk away into the forest. "I advise you to think hard about it. We wouldn't want this world covered in robots. I myself have no intention to let that happen."

Tails watched Shadow disappear into the woods. He placed the rings back on himself and sat cross legged in the sand, facing the ocean. He closed his eyes, thinking deeply. What would happen if he went back? Would they welcome him? Would they hate him? What if Eggman really did take over the world? Could I even do anything about it? All of these thoughts played around inside the kitsune's head. He did want to see everyone again, especially Cream. She was the last person he saw before he left, and knowing how sensitive she was, she probably became very upset.

Tails began to think very hard about this. He had grown very accustomed to this island and knew it like the back of his hand. This place became his home and he had been there for more than five years. He liked his daily routine and had somewhat moved on from what had happened all those years ago, but the teenage fox still had occasional nightmares and guilt trips, a few of which were so bad that Shadow had to smack him to get him to calm down. But he had kept true to his resolution and hadn't let any tears fall from his eyes. He remembered what Shadow had told him, to "wipe the blood from your chin and get on with your day". Tails moved on from everything that had happened. Mostly everything.

But then Tails realized something: he was doing the same to Sonic and everyone that Cosmo had did to him. He was making them feel the same way. After a long while of considering, Tails made his decision.

"I'll go back and help Sonic" Tails said to himself. "I'll decide if I want to actually live there based on their reaction."

The yellow kitsune stood up and dashed into the forest, looking for Shadow to tell him and to check on his plant. It took only a brief moment for him to arrive back at his cabin. He walked in to find Shadow lounging on the other bed, which was where he spent most of his time when he wasn't training Tails or running around.

"I decided to go help fight Eggman" he said to Shadow.

Shadow didn't change his position. "Good. When?"

Tails hadn't really thought about _when _he would go. "I don't know. I guess now and try to prevent him from take this new city" he answered while watering the large red plant. It was nearly as big as he was now, and had grown the whole time he was there, but had yet to bloom.

Shadow sat up and faced him. "Good luck. Do not forget what I have taught you."

"Wait. You're not coming with me?"

"I'm coming, but you are going to be the one who's fighting." Shadow could see that Tails didn't quite get it. "I'm going to let you try on your own."

"Do you think I'm capable?"

"I wouldn't let you do it if I didn't think you were capable."

Tails smiled at the amount of confidence that Shadow had for him. "Okay. Let's go then."

With that, they both dashed out of the house and to the ocean. Shadow skated on the water and Tails flew above it. They had both decided that they would normally travel without means of chaos control. This was because all they had were fake chaos emeralds, and they died out after a few uses, and Tails only had so much of them.

Cream the Rabbit, she still lived with her mother near Tails' old home. She stood at the window of her bedroom and gazed out into the sky. The once little bunny had grown in every which way that a young woman her age should be. Now about thirteen, Cream had a much more womanly figure and was slightly taller. Other than that, she did not change in appearance at all, except a larger and longer dress that was exactly like her old one.

Her large brown eyes stared out of the window and to the sky. Five years ago when Tails left, she had never been the same. She was still innocent and pure, but did not have the same happy vibe that she once had. Frowns occupied her face whenever people weren't looking and enthusiasm did not come easy, even for her mother or Amy. She would often stare at the sky for long hours, hoping to see Tails or even the X-Tornado fly across, but that had yet to happen.

Cream's gaze was interrupted by her mother calling for her. "Cream?"

The young rabbit sighed and lazily walked out of her room to the kitchen where her mother was. "Yes mother?" Creams voice had changed also. It was not unbearably high pitched anymore, but was still very high.

Vanilla was cooking and turned her head. "Would you be a dear and run into town to pick up some things for me" the older rabbit asked politely. She would often send her daughter out for errands now that she was older, and sometimes it was the only way to get her out of the house.

Cream took a list from a nearby countertop. "Sure, I'll be back soon."

Before Vanilla could thank her and remind her to be careful, Cream had already walked out of the house.

Cream walked at a lazily slow pace, looking at the sky rather than where she was going. The city she was going to was in sight after she came over a hill. It was not far from her home at all, but it would still take a few minutes to get to the nearest grocery store.

Time passed quickly and Cream found herself in the outer edge of the city where buildings and concrete took over and no green could be seen. But something was very unusual. The streets were absolutely deserted. People had gotten out of their cars and left them in the roads, and everything was silent. That is until a loud bang was heard around the corner. Cream jumped at the sound and a blue streak came flying towards her. It stopped right in front of her.

"Cream! What are you doing? Run!" It was none other than Sonic the hedgehog, with an exceptionally large robot behind him.

Cream nodded her head and ran back the way she came. Sonic turned around just in time to be swiped away and crash into the side of a building. Cream saw and started to run faster, but the large machine caught up easily and scooped her off of the ground.

Doctor Eggman's voice rang out through speakers on the contraption. "Well well. Look at what we have here."

The large hand opened up to reveal a distressed Cream, huddled up in fear. "It seems I have a new hostage!"

Sonic stumbled out of the hole in the building that he had crashed into, looking more beaten than he did before. "Let her go!"

Eggman's laughter filled the surrounding area. "Or what? Are you going to bleed on me? You can hardly stand!" Then the doctor's hysterical laughter rang out. "No! I think that I will keep her. If you decide to interfere with my business again, my next generation E-99's hand may just tighten when I'm not looking."

Eggman demonstrated his point by commanding the robot to close its hand around Cream, which it did, but not enough to crush her. Cream's muffled screams and cries could be heard from in between the giant metal fingers. The other hand tore off a large chunk from another building and hurled it at Sonic, burying him.

It took a moment for Sonic to crawl out of the rubble, and when he emerged, Eggman was gone. "D-damn y-you" he whispered before passing out.

oOo

_There's chapter 11 for you._

_Now let me explain. I'm not sure how it went in the Japanese timeline of Sonic X, but six months had passed in between each season, making a year pass total, which makes Tails about 9 when the show ends. But a few weeks passed actually during each season. The show seemed to start at the beginning of the school year, late August or early September where I'm from. Because Tails' birthday is October 16, those few weeks must have passed through that, making him actually closer to 10 years old at the beginning on series 2. Add the five years and that makes him fifteen. Because Cream is two years younger and I was unable to find a birthday for her, I just made her 13. Amy is 18 because of the 1 year that happened over the show__plus the five year jump. So basically, every character is six years older than they originally are, making Sonic 21 and so on and so forth.__ My logic is undeniable, so don't question me! (__slams__ fist on desk)_

_Now that I have rambled on for a minute or so, I will tell you that I will update not for a long while. I have finals on Friday and all next week, and being the dedicated student that I am, (yeah right) I will be studying hard (or just enough to keep my parents off my back) and will not be writing for a while. So with all of that said and done, I'll see you in a week or two._


	12. A Short Reunion

Ch 12

_Okay, that did not take nearly as long as I thought. I had been studying for my finals, but then I got so bored that I spent an entire 14 hour day on the computer__ to make up for it__, and in doing so, finished this chapter. Now this one is short, and I have re-rated it to T, for slightly increased language and violence. So here's chapter 12: A Short Reunion_

oOo

Tails and Shadow stood on the edge of a large sky scraper in the newly deserted city. From what they could tell, people just got up and left. There was no way Eggman could systematically capture or destroy everyone without leaving some sort of disturbance behind.

"Why is the city so empty?" Tails asked Shadow, hoping he would have an answer.

Shadow took another long look around. There weren't any people visible in the buildings, streets or cars. Everything was still and there were no signs of a struggle or battle, except a small puff of smoke and dust rising on the other side of the city.

"I don't know" Shadow replied. "Look over there." He pointed his finger at the puff of smoke.

Tails saw it quickly. "Perhaps we will find something there" Tails suggested.

"I agree. Let's go."

They jumped off of the building, Shadow skating down the side and Tails let himself fall, letting his frictionless shoes slide down. They landed with a thud and dashed around the buildings towards the site. It was the only sign of life, so it seemed the logical place to check out first.

They arrived on a street that had a building with a hole in the side of it. The smoke was coming from it and Tails flew up to see what was inside. The teenage fox was a little surprised, but he half expected it to be Sonic. The blue hedgehog lay there, unconscious and half buried under rubble. Tails flew in and grabbed his hand to pull him out. Tails lowered him to the ground, laying him out on the concrete.

Tails felt very guilty and upset from what he saw. His best friend lay there, scarred, bruised, beaten, and worn. All because he was selfish enough to leave him to defend the world on his own. The sky turned grey and the wind was picking up. Anyone could tell that a storm was coming.

Tails picked up Sonic and slung him over his shoulder, and then he faced Shadow. "Let's take him back to my old house."

Shadow nodded and fallowed Tails' lead out of the city. They had to travel at fast speeds to get there before it started to rain. The city was not too far away from Tails' old home, and they arrived quickly. Tails opened the door and stepped in, followed by Shadow right before rain started to fall.

"I'll be right back" Tails said, then carried the unconscious hedgehog upstairs and placed him on the bed. Judging by how he looked, he would be out for a few hours. Tails returned down stairs and told Shadow as much.

Tails lazily sat down on the sofa and held his head in his hands. He let out a sigh. "Feel free to sit down" he said to Shadow.

"I'd rather stand." Shadow then backed up and leaned against the wall. "What do you plan on doing?"

Tails looked up and kept his chin resting on his hand, staring off into space, and thinking. "I'm going to wait until he wakes up and see if he is alright." He paused for a second unsure of what to do. "After that, I don't know."

Shadow nodded and closed his eyes, waiting for future events to unfold. An hour or so passed and the storm had gotten worse. Rain came down in buckets and lightning streaked across the sky. Tails knew that Sonic would wake up by himself and stumble down here eventually, or he would try and a thump would be heard from him falling down. That is, if he hadn't changed in the past five years. So Tails sat there, waiting patiently and contemplating what to say or do when that moment came.

Suddenly a knock came from the door, the soft sound standing out against the silence between thunder strikes. Shadow's eyes shot open and Tails lifted his head. Shadow waited a brief moment for Tails to move or to tell him to open the door, but that didn't happen. Shadow took it upon himself to open the door.

Shadow immediately felt a pair of wet arms grab him and push him back slightly. "Ouff" Shadow threw his arms up from the surprise, looking at the pink hedgehog embracing him.

"Oh, Sonic!" The voice was none other than that of Amy Rose, sobbing like mad. "Are you okay? I heard that Eggman really hurt you today." She gripped 'Sonic' tighter, overjoyed that he was standing there uninjured.

Shadow rolled his eyes in disbelief that everyone thought that he and Sonic looked alike. To him they looked nothing alike. They weren't even the same color! "Get off of me please" the dark hedgehog said as politely as he could, having to briefly pause between each word to think of the right one to say next. That was what Tails had done to him in the past five years; lowered his temper ever so slightly. Five years ago, he would not have hurt her, but he may have used a few choice four letter words. Three times was way too many.

Amy took her face away from him and looked up. "Shadow?" She then quickly let go and backed up a few steps. "Is that you?" Amy's confusion was understandable, as she hadn't seen or even heard about him in five years.

Shadow resumed his position against the wall after closing the door. "Who else would it be?"

"Uh…" Amy didn't have an answer and looked around the room. Her eyes met Tails', who had stood up.

Tails saw and tried to act casual, wanting to avoid either the tearful reunion that Amy could start, or the violent one where she pulls out her hammer and beats on him for leaving. "Uh, hi Amy" he greeted enthusiastically while scratching the back of his head.

"Tails!" Amy ran up and hugged him. Tails threw his arms up as Shadow had, but returned the hug eventually. Tails then let his arms drop, but Amy was still embracing him tightly, crying softly into his chest. He was perhaps Amy's closest friend aside from Cream, but he had had enough, and wanted to be let go.

Amy could tell and stepped back. "Where have you been" she asked while wiping tears off her face.

"Away."

Amy understood and did not press the point. "Sorry for being so emotional. Everyone thought you were dead."

Tails thought as much, but wanted to get himself out of the spotlight. "Sonic is upstairs out cold. We brought him back here when we found him."

Suddenly a small thump noise was heard from the ceiling. Sonic had done exactly what Tails had thought, and tried to get up when he couldn't.

Tails sighed. "Hasn't he learned to stay still yet?"

Amy giggled a little. "Not really."

Tails walked towards the stairs, followed by Amy. Shadow decided to stay behind, not wanting to see his better half. Tails stopped suddenly at the top before the door.

"What's wrong" Amy asked, concerned.

Tails was unsure of what Sonic's reaction would be, and was actually afraid. Half of him wanted to see him really badly. But the other half wanted to turn around and walk away. "It's nothing" he replied, stepping through the door.

Just as Tails had thought, Sonic was lying on the floor, trying to crawl to the door, but he had given up and was just lying there, half asleep. Tails walked up and helped him up and laid him back on the bed, Amy following close behind. Once that was done, Tails looked slightly aggravated, like a mother does when her child is misbehaving.

"Can't you ever learn to stay still?"

Sonic's eyes were closed and he didn't recognize Tails new voice. "Who is that" he asked lazily.

Tails opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. He didn't know what to say. Suddenly, he wanted to disappear, but he did not have a chaos emerald with him unfortunately.

Sonic grew impatient and opened his eyes. He looked in the direction of the voice, waiting for his vision to come back into focus. "Tails?"

Tails turned his head away, feeling ashamed in a way. "Yeah."

Sonic sat up in his bed, looking at Tails with a smile. "Watcha been up too" Sonic asked casually, as if Tails just got back from vacation.

Tails turned to the side and crossed his arms, trying to hide as much of himself as possible. He could only answer in mumbles. "Not much." The teenage fox waited a moment, and then carried on the conversation. "What have you been up to?"

Sonic sighed and lay back in the bed. "Trying to stop Eggman" he replied bluntly. All of the sudden, his memory clicked back on and he shot back up. "He took Cream yesterday!"

Tails quickly turned his head back to him, his face that of anger. "What?" His voice had deepened ever so slightly and his aqua blue eyes turned a dark navy color.

"I don't know what happened. I was losing, I tried to run away, but then she was there" Sonic began franticly explaining. "I told her to run, but then Eggman's new machine came from behind and hit me. Then he took her."

Tails grabbed Sonic by the shoulders and pulled him up. "Where? Where did he take her" he demanded while shaking him for answers.

Sonic felt as if he wasn't talking to the same person anymore, but he answered as truthfully as he could. "Uh, probably his base to the north!"

Tails threw Sonic back down and started to walk away. Sonic tried to get up, but was held to the bed by Amy. "Where are you going" the blue hedgehog asked. "There is no way you could get into the base!"

It was then that Shadow decided to join them. He stepped through the door and stood in front of Tails, getting him to stop. The black hedgehog looked at him up and down, assessing if he would be capable of doing what he was trying to do. "I have watched Tails grow in more than just stature." He was directing his voice at Sonic, who at this point despised Shadow for not sending Tails home. "He has become much more intelligent and powerful, and he is more than capable of getting into the good doctor's base if he sets himself to do so."

Shadow handed Tails a fake chaos emerald stepped to the side and waved his hand for him to walk on. Sonic was standing and trying to break free of Amy's grasp to try to get to Shadow. Tails walked forward but stopped at the door to face Shadow. "Thank you, Shadow. But may I ask something of you?"

Shadow nodded his head and waited to hear the request.

"Make sure Sonic stays in bed until I get back. If he tries to leave…" Tails was wording his sentence very carefully. He wanted to sound threatening, but not cruel. "Use your imagination."

Shadow grew a very sinister grin and faced Sonic, looking more evil that the devil himself. Although it mostly for show, he intended to fulfill Tails' request. "I think that Sonic will cooperate" he answered, seeing Sonic's eyes fill with fear.

Tails gave the rest of the occupants a silent goodbye, and walked out of the house and into the storm. The rain soaked through him and the wind tossed his head fur around his face. If he would normally be cold or afraid, he wasn't now. The only thing on his mind right now was Cream. No one would ever take his friends away from him, and if they did, there would be hell to pay.

The teenage fox slid off of the beach using his tails and shoes. He headed towards the north as fast as his tails would push him, leaving a golden-yellow streak in his wake. The base wasn't that hard to find. It was more or less a city that Eggman had taken over and had built a very large tower in the middle. It was so tall that it pierced the clouds and the lightning circled around it. Tails stood at the edge of a cliff that overlooked the city. From what he could tell, it was completely deprived of live. There were, however, F-Series robots standing guard in the streets and on top of buildings.

If there was one thing Shadow had taught him, it was to make a plan. The fake emerald that he held could induce chaos control approximately two times, depending on the distance. The best way would be by stealth. He would get as close as he could without being noticed, and then destroy anything and everything that came across him.

His dark blue eyes looked over the city with hate, an over exaggerated frown across his face. The innocence was gone and only negativity and hate remained. This was the other half of Tails, and it could not be stopped.

"Before the sun rises I'll burn this whole goddamn city to the ground."

oOo

_That's all there is. The next__ one will be very action packed__ and the main part of "Tails X" has finally begun!_

_Also, I plan on having a picture of Tails drawn and posted on __deviantart__ by the next update. I'll leave a link for you at the end of the next chapter if you want to see._


	13. Rescue Mission

Ch 13

_Wow that was quick! Not studying for finals feels so good! And I feel no guilt! Studying is boring anyway. What's the point in living if you don't enjoy yourself? As I said before, I have a picture of Tails on my deviantart and there is a link on my profile that will take you right to it. Chapter 13: __Rescue Mission_

oOo

Tails jumped off of the cliff and slid down the side. For the moment, there were no robots around and he should be safe. He reached the bottom and dashed behind a smaller building, hiding in the shadows and escaping the rain due to an overhang. The young fox knew that he had to stay out of the light. His yellow fur could be very easy to see in any amount of light, so it would be best to stay in total darkness.

A small, hovering robot flew by, looking for anything abnormal. It failed to see Tails and continued on. He dashed out and quickly got behind another building closer to the tower, but he was still blocks away. Tails studied the buildings around him. Most of the larger ones and skyscrapers had the windows smashed out. This gave him an idea.

He jumped into the building through an open window and climbed to the topmost level. As he thought, a majority of the windows were smashed out. He could dash from building to building without much fear of being spotted. There were robots on the roofs of the buildings and around them, but none were actually inside.

Tails waited until the coast was clear, then jumped out and quickly flew through a broken window of a skyscraper across the street. He then ran to the other side and kept repeating this maneuver until he could not get any further.

The tower was now in full view and the size could be fully comprehended. It had a base that took up a few city blocks and the top could not be seen. Tails wondered how Eggman could build something so big, even in five years. He also realized that it would be difficult to find Cream in something so large. If he had a real chaos emerald, he could chaos control from place to place without limit until he found her, but he must reserve it. Cream was probably in a cage or cell of some kind and it would take one chaos control to get in there and another to get her out. One fake emerald might barely be enough for that.

And now, Tails had another problem. There were no more buildings for him to hide in and the tower was still a few thousand yards away. In between the tower and himself was an army of F-Series robots, standing in formation ready to defend on top of leveled city ground. Tails thought about trying to fly over them all, but more hovering robots occupied the sky.

Tails cursed under his breath. There was no way to get into the tower undetected. But then he thought back to before they were sent to Chris' world, when Sonic was trying to break into Eggman's old base. Sonic had smashed through every robot he came across and made it all the way to Eggman without stealth of any kind.

"If being sneaky isn't going to get me any farther…" Tails said while removing his rings from his wrists and ankles. "then I'll fight my way through."

He tucked the rings away, already feeling ten times lighter than he did before. The teenage fox got a running start, and dived out the window, flying through the air at extreme speeds. The robots on the ground saw a golden yellow streak and open fired. The hovering robots did also, but Tails grabbed one and hurled it towards the ground troops, destroying several in the explosion that followed.

Tails then dashed towards another one and repeated his attack. The sky was his element, and in it, he was king. He looked like lightning in the surrounding storm, traveling from robot to robot and knocking them out of the sky. He was getting closer and closer to the entrance of the tower, destroying as many machines as he could reach, easily evading the bullets that never could quite find him.

oOo

Doctor Eggman sat in an office chair near a large computer. He had aged like the rest of the world, but not for the better. His complexion had gotten slightly wrinkly, his mustache had a few grey hairs among the other brown-orange ones, and he gotten even more egg-shaped, if it were possible. Cream was trapped in a glass dome in the back of the room, her knees pulled into her chest and her head buried in them.

Suddenly an alarm went off and red light filled the room, an awful wailing noise accompanying it. Cream jumped slightly in surprise and Eggman flung himself over his computer, looking for the reason behind the alarm. After a brief moment of pounding on what seemed to be random keys, he cursed under his breath.

"Can't that miserable blue hedgehog ever give me a day off" he said to himself, under the false assumption that Sonic was the one trying to break in. "Beating him up every day is exhausting and a waste of resources!"

Cream scowled at him, standing up in her glass bubble. Eggman had never seemed to be 'evil' as it were, just a bad guy. He would try to take over the world now and then, but he would never actually try to kill anyone like he tried to do to Sonic nowadays. Perhaps power let the evil side of Doctor Eggman show itself.

Eggman started to bark orders into a microphone that was near the computer. "I want that hedgehog stopped! All units deploy!" He paused for a second, preparing to say this last part with as much evil dripping from his voice as he could. "Lethal force approved!"

Cream shuddered, but did not waver. "How can you be so mean" he asked angrily. "Nobody ever hurt you! Why do you try to take over the world and make everyone suffer?"

Eggman faced her, an agitated look on his face. "Silence! I do what I do simply because I want to do it! There is no other reason." He then turned back around and started typing on his keybord.

There was no point in trying to argue with someone with an attitude like that, and Cream sat back down in her cell, not wanting to further provoke the doctor's anger.

oOo

Tails hurled one last robot in front of the door, clearing a place for him to land.

"Chaos spear!" A yellow flash of light flew from his extended had and crashed into the door, blowing a small hole in it, just big enough for Tails to fit through. He dived into it, head first, and did a front hand spring onto his feet.

Tails looked back at the door, the hole just small enough to keep the robots from coming in. He was in a large empty room, the walls and floor all made of tiled steel. It was dark, but not dark enough that Tails couldn't see.

Suddenly Doctor Eggman's voice rang throughout the room. "So, Sonic. You think you can just walk in here and take back my hostage!? You may have made it into my base, but you will never make it out!" the evil doctor's laughter then filled the room.

Tails couldn't help but smile to himself. Eggman thought he was Sonic. How entertaining. But he did not want to disappoint the doctor when he arrived. "Who said I am Sonic" he yelled out into the empty room.

Eggman up in his control room hear him, and didn't recognize the voice. He pressed a button to have a camera come out of a wall to get a better look. Tails saw and jumped up and hovered in the shadows near the ceiling, where it was completely dark.

"Ah ah. You wouldn't want to spoil the surprise, would you?" Tails was teasing the doctor, but he wasn't amused.

"Coward! There is no way you can make it to me! You might as well show yourself and give up!" Eggman's irritable growl rang out again.

"Really? Then why don't you tell me where you are if you're so confident?"

If Tails' guess was right, Eggman's ego would be just as large as it was five years ago. And he was right.

"Haha! I'm at the topmost level. Come and get me!"

Tails chuckled to himself. Eggman was a genius, but he was still incredibly stupid. "See you there."

Tails used a chaos spear to destroy the camera that was searching for him and started looking for a way up. There was a blast door on the opposite side of the room. It was to only way to get anywhere besides where he had come, so he went that way. There was a keypad that required a code to open the door. Tails smashed it and the door opened with a whine to reveal an entire platoon of F-Series robots. The teenage fox braced himself and leapt forward to attack.

oOo

Back at Tails house, Sonic was reluctantly laying in bed. He couldn't believe that Tails would just leave Shadow there to do what he pleased with him. But it didn't seem like Shadow had the intention of doing anything but making sure that he did what Tails had asked. The dark hedgehog stood by the door against the wall, arms crossed and eyes closed. Once Sonic tried to get up, but Shadow didn't even have to open his eyes to know, and said "don't think about moving, hedgehog" and Sonic laid back down immediately.

Amy was still in the room, sitting on the bedside near Sonic. None of them said a word until Amy, hating uncomfortable silences, spoke.

"So, Shadow…"

The ebony hedgehog opened his eyes and looked over, but did not move.

"Would you mind telling us what Tails has being doing the past five years?"

"Yeah! What's been going on" Sonic added.

Shadow sighed, but answered as truthfully as he could. "Tails has simply been living out his life, trying to forget what he had done. Although I have told him that he has not done anything wrong, he refuses to believe me and tried to restart his life."

"Why didn't you send him home" Sonic demanded. "He was only a kid and you helped him run away!"

Amy was looking at Sonic in a way that told him to stop, but he ignored her.

"And what's worse, you turned him into someone just as cold and miserable as you!"

Amy quickly put her hand over Sonic's mouth, hoping that what he said did not provoke Shadow into hurting him.

Shadow stood straight up and glared at him. "Watch what you say, or I'll take you outside and drown you in a puddle!" Shadow saw that small speck of fear come back into Sonic's eyes. Satisfied, Shadow answered the question. "I didn't send him home because he asked me to. And I didn't go tell you for the same reason. Although still a child, he was more than capable of making his own decisions. He is far wiser than you have ever thought possible, and not just in the way of machines!"

Shadow resumed leaning against the wall and crossed his arms. Sonic stayed in bed and Amy was mumbling something to him about controlling his temper. A few hours passed and Sonic and Amy had eventually fallen asleep on the bed. Shadow stayed where he was but didn't sleep. The ultimate life form never did need much sleep.

oOo

Tails had been climbing levels in the tower for hours, beating off every single robot that challenged him. Eggman no longer tried to communicate with him, but Tails was getting impatient. If the tower was tall enough to pierce the clouds, it would take him forever to get to the topmost level, and from what he could tell, there was no elevator.

Tails walked to a wall that he guessed was the outside wall. He could tell by the steady pattern of rain. He had decided to get out and fly to the roof and get in that way. The wall was thick, and since it seemed that he had destroyed all of the robots on this level, he took his time charging up a chaos spear powerful enough to blow through it. He used two hands, and the yellow ball grew to about the size of a beach ball, then he heaved it at the wall.

"Chaos spear!"

Tails could instantly feel the cold rain fly in and he jumped out. It was the middle of the night by now, but Tails stayed wide awake and focused. He started to fly upwards, leaving a yellow streak and swirling rain in his wake. There were no more robots. Tails assumed that Eggman must have not been paying attention anymore; too confident that he would be destroyed.

Tails passed through the clouds, where the top of the tower was in view. The moon was visible and there was no rain, since he was above the clouds, but it was cold. He landed gracefully on the roof, which was flat and the size of a baseball field. He picked the center and threw a good sized chaos spear at it, creating a hole big enough for him to fall through.

The young kitsune was starting to feel the strain of battle. His tails were aching and his whole body felt a small sense of exhaustion from having to use chaos spears more often than he was used to. Shadow could throw them around all day, but Tails wasn't gifted with such unnatural stamina. He cleared his head and took a deep breath, before jumping through the hole. He was not about to show any weakness when he was so close.

Eggman had fallen asleep, just as Tails had thought. The doctor jumped awake when Tails entered because of the loud boom noise. He saw the hole in the roof and studied the figure that was silhouetted beneath it. Cream was also looking at him, trying to see who it was.

"Who is that? Show yourself" Eggman ordered angrily.

Tails stepped forward into the light, revealing himself. "It's been a long time, Eggman" he remarked, a grin on his face.

Eggman raised a brow. "Tails?"

"Tails" Cream said weakly before passing out in her cell.

Tails looked over at her and the grin was gone. His eyes darted back at Eggman and flashed the dark blue color. "Hear me, Eggman! I'm going to take her and leave" he said very sternly, the doctor paying the utmost attention. "And if you ever threaten any of my friends again, I will make you suffer for it." Tails meant every word and made sure to sound as threatening as possible.

Eggman smirked and pressed a button on the control panel. "What makes you think that you can do that?"

A very large robot stepped out from the darkness at the side of the room. It stood motionlessly, waiting for orders.

"This." Tails didn't even look at it and raised his hand towards it. Yellow sparks crackled briefly before a flash of yellow light flew from his hand and right through the robot, making it explode. Tails let his hand fall again and took out the fake chaos emerald.

"Chaos control!" Tails disappeared, leaving a small flash of light and reappeared inside Cream's cell. He said the words again and reappeared back where he was before, holding the unconscious rabbit bridal style.

"Remember my words, Eggman."

Tails then jumped through the hole in the ceiling and onto the roof. He started to head in the direction of Cream's house, flying at a decent speed but not enough to wake Cream or make her uncomfortable. Plus, if he flew to fast the wind would freeze the both of them.

As soon as Tails left, Eggman smashed a few buttons on his computer and screamed into the microphone. "All robots after that fox! I want them captured!"

Suddenly a bullet whizzed past him and grazed his arm. He winced but kept flying. Tails had a feeling that something like this would happen, and he looked back to see entire swarms of flying robots come towards him. He pulled out the emerald, but it was grey and empty. "Damn!" He squeezed his hand and the emerald crumpled into dust. He was going to have to out run them, but he realized that he could not outrun them for much longer, and he couldn't lead them to Cream's house. He had to lose them before he could take her home.

The young fox dashed back under the clouds and into the freezing rain. He certainly was faster than the machines, but he was becoming exhausted and he could feel an ice cold rabbit in his arms start to shiver in her sleep. He had to find a place to hide and get warm before Cream froze to death.

The machines were out of sight for now, but they would catch up any second. He looked around franticly for a place to hide. There were mountains about a mile to his right. There had to be a cave to hide in there somewhere. He flew off into that direction and hovered for a brief moment before spotting a cave.

He made sure that the robots weren't in sight, and then he flew into it, going as deep as he could to escape the freezing weather. He came to the end and it was pitch black. But Tails could still see slightly, being a fox and having somewhat advanced eyesight.

Cream started to wake, and moved around slightly. Tails walked to a wall of the cave and set her down against it. He kneeled down to try and see if she was awake yet. "Cream? Cream?"

The younger rabbit opened her eyes slowly and struggled to see. The cold hit her and she immediately curled up into a ball. She could barely make out Tails' outline. Tears were forming in her eyes. "Tails" she asked quietly.

"Yes" was all he said. He noticed her still shivering madly. Her fur was well groomed and not as able to keep out the cold as much as Tails unkempt, thick, shaggy fur was. He sat down next to her and pulled her close, wrapping his two tails around them both.

"This should keep you warm enough" he said quietly.

Cream felt the warmth and snuggled closer to him. His fur was much warmer than her own, and it easily drove away the cold. "Thank you" she said as she rested her head on his shoulder.

"Go to sleep. We can't leave until the sun comes up and the robots have left."

Cream was exhausted and complied without question. She fell asleep easily, warm and comfortable next to Tails. She hadn't felt safe or happy like this in a long, long time. Tails would stay awake though, keeping watch just in case Eggman's machines came in here. He looked down at the sleeping rabbit nuzzled against him. He too felt a sense of joy that he had not felt in a long while. "Good night" he whispered softly.

oOo

_Okay, sense I have all half days__ in school__ this week and I have given up studying because it sucks, the next one may be out this weekend or even sooner, but no promises. I do__ have__ other things__ to do__ besides write fan fiction to occupy my time. And I think this fic may be going in a slightly different direction than I previously thought. Remember that my pic of Tails is up. But be warned, I'm not a great artist, but I don't think that it's terrible :/_


	14. Evil Plans Are Born

_Sorry this chapter is short, but it's just one of those ones that is necessary to advance the story. So here's chapter 14: Evil Plans Are Born_

OOO

Hours had passed and the sun was almost completely up over the horizon. Shadow stayed against the wall in Tails' old house the entire night, waiting for him to return. Amy woke up in reaction to the sunlight beating on her face that came in through a window. She got up slowly and observed the room. Sonic rolled over, subconsciously trying to avoid the sun from coming into his eyes and Shadow stayed exactly where he was when she fell asleep. But she did not see Tails.

The pink hedgehog wiped her eyes and stood up, facing Shadow. "Has Tails come back yet?"

"No" Shadow replied plainly.

"Well, shouldn't he have been back by now" she asked with a worried tone.

"I don't know" he began. "It is possible that they are hiding from Eggman's robots somewhere. There is also a small chance that he has failed."

Sonic mumbled something and sat up, glaring at Shadow. He had been awake long enough to what Shadow said. "I told him that he couldn't do it. And he listened to you over me!

With all of the advanced machines that Eggman has built over the years, he would be lucky to get to within a hundred yards of Eggman's tower!"

Shadow stepped away from the wall and uncrossed his arms. "He is taking longer than I thought he would, but I highly doubt that he has failed."

Sonic continued his glaring at him and gritted his teeth. "How can you possibly know that? What makes you think that he is capable of breaking into Eggman's base. He's just a kid!"

"Tails is more powerful than you can imagine! I have seen some of the things that he can do when he is motivated or angry enough, and I know that he would dive into the deepest parts of hell to get what he wants!"

The room fell silent for a moment and Sonic couldn't think of anything smart to say back. Sonic would always think of Tails as the little fox that followed him around five years ago, but Shadow knew much better of his new found abilities. By the way Shadow was bragging about him, Tails must have changed a lot.

"You do not realize what happens to someone when they lose someone that they care for" Shadow began to say calmly. "Tails lost someone very important to him, and he would die before losing someone else."

Sonic had a vague idea of what that was like. When Tails left, he would have done everything in his power to keep another one of his friends from leaving. The blue hedgehog sighed and sat back in the bed. As much as he hated it, Shadow was right.

OOO

Tails could feel Cream start to move around slightly. She was waking up, and Tails had been keeping track of the time. He could not be completely right, but he guessed that it would be early in the morning. The cave was still totally dark, but Tails looked down and could barely see Cream's eyes open.

Tails stood up and took her hand. "I think it's safe to leave now" he said gently, pulling her to her feet. He held on to her hand and guided her to the entrance.

Unlike Tails, Cream couldn't see at all, and relied on him to get her out. They were in deep, so it took a few minutes to reach the end. The sunlight was bright and it looked as if it hadn't rained at all last night.

Cream looked up at Tails for the first time in five years. His fur was thick and shaggy as she had guessed, but it was clean and shined brightly in the golden sunlight. He was considerably taller than her, and he had acquired a slightly different wardrobe.

Tails looked back at her, her brown eyes looking up and down at him. He smiled and chuckled. "You're looking at me like you've never seen me before." His voice had changed much also, but Cream had noticed that last night.

Suddenly, the tan rabbit leaped at him and hugged him tightly, burying her face in his chest and softly crying. "You were gone for five years" she said in between sobs, muffled from being against him.

Tails looked down at her and frowned. He felt so guilty. He had done this to everyone, but Cream was so young when he left. She was his best friend, aside from Sonic, but she was the one he probably saw the most.

"Cream…"

Tails wrapped his arms around her and returned the hug. It was then he made the decision that he was thinking about before leaving the island yesterday. "I'm back. And I'm never going to leave again."

Creams sobbing stopped and she looked up at him, tears still running down her face.

"Really?"

"Yes." And he meant it.

Cream smiled and stepped back, wiping the tears from her eyes. Tails gave her a warm smile and held out his hand. "What do you say I take you back to your mom?"

Cream took his hand and he scooped her up and lifted off of the ground. "Hold on" he said before blasting off in the direction of Cream's house, going fast enough to scare the small rabbit, but she felt safe in Tails' strong arms.

He looked down and saw Cream's look of amazement. She could fly herself, but never dreamed of going this fast. She didn't think that anyone could go that fast except for Sonic. The ground beneath them moved by in a blur. Tails loved the feeling of having his rings off and flying at breakneck speeds, but he could go faster if he pleased.

"You want to go faster?" He had to yell for her to hear him over the wind rushing past them.

Cream's eyes widened, but she did want to go faster. It was so fun! She nodded her head and braced herself. Tails spun his Tails as fast as he could, and an extreme burst of speed followed. The air they rushed through moved around them in a bubble shape. Tails was close to the speed of sound, but this was a fast as he could go.

Cream was laughing. The rush was great to her, however, it ended quickly. Traveling nearly the speed of sound can get you anywhere fast. Tails slowed down and landed softly on the ground in front of Cream's house, letting her down as he did.

The young rabbit faced him and gave him a sad look. She was worried that she might not see him again, and her once happy smile dropped into a frown.

"What's wrong" Tails asked, concerned.

"Are you going to leave again" she asked sadly, her eyes getting bigger with tears.

Tails smiled kindly at her. "Didn't I already tell you that I'm not leaving again?"

He waved goodbye and started walking backwards down the road. "I'll be at my house if you ever want to visit" he said before turning around and walking down the countryside road, heading back to his old home.

Cream stood there and watched him until he was out of sight. She was so happy. Her best friend was back and he was going to stay. Her mother would also be very happy to know that he's back. Speaking of which, Vanilla still didn't know that she had been saved. She must be worried sick. Cream turned around and ran up to the door and inside the house to see her mother again.

Tails was running down the country side road back to his former home. He decided to run instead of flying to give his tails a break. The young fox was actually quite exhausted.

After a few minutes, he arrived back at the house and quietly walked in. He sat laid down on the sofa and sighed.

Shadow had heard Tails enter and walked down stairs. He could see that Tails' eyes were closed, but he knew that the teenage kitsune was awake. Shadow felt a sense of satisfaction coming from Tails, and assumed that he had accomplished his mission.

"What took you so long" the black hedgehog asked mockingly.

Tails grinned and opened his eyes. "You expect too much. And thanks for keeping Sonic put. I owe you."

Shadow nodded and walked towards the door. "I'll be out. If you need me, go to the island."

Shadow had had quite enough social interaction in the past few hours. Besides, he was a lot like Sonic, and didn't like to be still for a long time, although he would never admit it. The black hedgehog exited the house and dashed down the beach, going anywhere he pleased.

Tails closed his eyes and put his arms behind his head. He would rest, but not sleep. He almost never slept, just to avoid nightmares, and he would always keep his mind busy to stop thinking about Cosmo. The young fox never had any uninterrupted rest for his mind or his body, but he got what he could, so he just lay there, daydreaming.

But then his thoughts wandered to Doctor Eggman. The spherical villain would surely seek out revenge for his little break in. The most likely thing he would do, is attack another city to lure him and Sonic there, then try to defeat us. By the way Sonic looked, he was defeated almost every time, but now that Tails was back, Eggman would have no chance. He would not allow the doctor's empire to spread any further.

OOO

Meanwhile back at Eggman's base, the good doctor was furiously typing on his computer, looking for any way to defeat the new and improved Tails. After a few minutes, he had an idea, and pulled up a page on the monitor with different pieces of scrap metal. At first, it looked like junk, but the label said 'METAREX' on it.

"Perhaps I can put these ruined Metarex parts to work" he pondered to himself.

He pressed a button and a tray with the parts came down from the ceiling. It was quite large and had various pieces from the metal exoskeletons of Dark Oak, Pale Bayleaf, and Dark Narcissus. When they had transformed into the three dragons that attacked them in space, Eggman took the liberty of grabbing the parts.

"Dark Oak was able to keep up with Super Sonic" he began to say to himself. "And if I can refurbish these parts, I can make a robot that will take down that pesky hedgehog and his fox forever!" Eggman's laughter rang throughout the room, echoing for a few seconds after he was done.

"Decoe! Bocoe! Bokkun! Get in here!"

The three robots stumbled out of a door to the side of the room.

"Yes, doctor!" they said in unison, saluting him.

They all looked disheveled and mistreated. Rust was very visible on Decoe and Bocoe and Bokkun looked plain dirty. Ever since Eggman had gained more powerful robots, he rarely had a need to use the three, and therefore rarely kept up with their maintenance.

"I want you three to do some research" he began. "Decoe and Bocoe will take a ship and search for the chaos emeralds. Bokkun will spy on Sonic and his friends and report their location and actions to me at the end of every day."

"Yes, doctor" they mumbled as they left to begin their assignments.

Doctor Eggman returned to typing on his computer, building plans to utilize these parts that he had.

OOO

_End of chapter 14._


	15. Tails Adventure

Ch15

_Sorry this one took so long. If you are the kind of reader who just skips these little author notes at the top and bottom, I beg of you: **read the one at the bottom!**_

_Anyways, here is chapter 15: Tails Adventure_

OOO

Tails continued to lay on the couch for a few minutes, thinking. That's all he really ever did when he wasn't training with Shadow or doing other various things. But the young fox's thoughts were interrupted by faint thumps coming from the stairs. He didn't even have to open his eyes to know it was Sonic.

The blue hedgehog was being helped down by Amy.

"You shouldn't be getting up yet" he said while standing.

Sonic stopped at the bottom of the stairs and told Amy to let him go. He could stand by himself and walk, but couldn't do stairs quite yet.

"If I can stand on my own, I'm good enough to get out of bed."

Amy stood near Tails with a hopeful smile. "Did you rescue Cream last night?"

"Yeah, she's at home right now."

Amy sighed in relief, already making plans to go see her best friend. Silence filled the room for a little while, until Tails started talking again.

"But Eggman is still in power. That was why I came back. We have to stop him. Which raises an important question: why haven't you used the chaos emeralds to stop him?"

Sonic suddenly looked a little guilty. "Well, about that. I hid them in the mystic ruins when we got back from space, but when I decided I needed them, I went back to get them, and they were gone."

Tails briefly rested his head in his hand. "You idiot! Couldn't you have just kept them with you the entire time?"

"Hey! I didn't want to be running around with golden spines and red eyes all the time. That would attract way too much unwanted attention to me."

Tails grunted, not believing how stupid Sonic still was after five years. You'd think he would get slightly smarter or more responsible with time.

"You're blue! How is gold any less weird than blue!?"

Sonic opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off my Tails.

"Never mind. The point is, that you don't have them, and Eggman doesn't have them. If he had them, he surely would have control of the entire world by now. So, somebody must have them."

Amy stepped forward and made a suggestion. "Who often finds rare jewels like chaos emeralds?" She waited for either one of them to answer, but they didn't. "Treasure hunters!"

Tails just got it, while Sonic was apparently still thinking. "Knuckles and Rouge!" he exclaimed.

Sonic slapped his forehead. "Of course! But why would Knuckles keep them from me when the world is in danger?"

"Knuckles wouldn't" Tails stated.

"But Rouge would!" Amy added.

Tails quickly formulated a plan in his head. "Sonic, you go find Rouge and see what she knows. I will go get the X-Tornado because it has a chaos emerald tracker in it. Just because they are missing doesn't mean that Rouge has them, and even if she did, she would have hidden them."

Sonic nodded. "I'll meet you back here later."

Tails returned the nod and walked out of the house, then accelerated over the ocean, making a small wall of waves to his side. Sonic now knew why he wasn't able to find Tails after five years: he was on an island, somewhere that you had to cross a large amount of water to get to.

The blue hedgehog cursed his own weakness before dashing out the door himself, heading towards the master emerald shrine. Rouge had been hanging out with Knuckles a lot since they got back from space, for his company or just waiting for a chance to steal the massive gem was a mystery to Sonic, but he knew that that would be a good place to start.

Amy stood in the empty house, looking confused for a brief moment, then angry. "How can they forget about me so easily" she yelled out to no one in particular. The pink hedgehog stormed out of the house, mumbling something about the two heroes being forgetful along with a few choice four letter words.

Tails was flying as fast as he could over the smooth blue surface. As he rushed over it, the wind he was creating smashed the glass-like surface into high waves. The young fox was very tired, but he knew that when he got back, he would grab a few fake emeralds, which would help restore him, and he would be flying back in his prized jet, getting all the rest that he would need.

Traveling at nearly the speed of sound in a straight line across open water, Tails arrived back quickly. He jammed his feet into the soft sand, stopping fully. He then started running into the woods towards his cabin. The young fox made sure to water his plant as he walked in.

When he arrived, Tails noticed that Shadow was laying on his bed lazily, looking asleep, but Tails knew better, so he talked to him as he started digging under his bed.

"Shadow, Sonic lost the chaos emeralds, so I'm taking the X-Tornado and a few fake emeralds" the yellow kitsune said while pulling an old duffle bag out from under his bed.

Shadow opened his eyes, paying attention to Tails. "That fool lost them?" The black hedgehog closed his eyes again and turned away, silently laughing at his better half's idiocy.

Tails turned to leave, but Shadow had one last thing to say. "I'll be around if things get too heavy. I'm sure the good doctor has a few good plans up his sleeve along with a few million robots to carry those plans out."

Tails briefly smiled and walked outside, jumping into the X-Tornado that was parked next to the log cabin. It was slightly rusty and dirty, but it looked the same as it did years ago. Tails was however, wondering if it would even work, considering he never used it. The first part of Shadow's training was that no machines may be used, especially the X-Tornado so that Tails would get exercise from flying around by himself.

He pressed the activation button and the engine revved up briefly before dying. Tails frowned at the machine, disappointed, but tried again. The engine revved a little longer, but died out with a sloppy sputtering noise like before. The young mechanic tried patiently a few more times, but after ten minutes without success, his patience was gone.

"Start, damn you!" He brought his fist down on the button, pushing it down and effectively cracking some of the metal around it. The engine revved up very loudly and the engine started, almost sounding aggravated that it was being abused.

Tails leaned back in the seat, eyeing the control panel. "Who am I, Fonzie?"

He gripped the control stick and pushed it forward ever so slightly, making the large machine inch forward. Satisfied that it was working, Tails pushed it all the way up, accelerating the plane over the small lake and into the sky with the same speed it always had.

Tails smiled at the control panel, proud that his creation still worked. He placed a fake emerald in the slot on the panel, doubling the X-Tornado's speed. He then checked the emerald radar, seeing the large dot was him from all of the fake ones in the back. Unlike the Blue Typhoon, the X-Tornado wasn't modified to not track fake emeralds.

A blinking dot showed up on the edge of the screen, meaning it was a long ways away. Tails placed the thing on auto pilot and kicked his feet up, thinking that it was a good idea to rest when he could. After all, the X-Tornado still wasn't moving nearly as fast as he could on his own.

Meanwhile back with Sonic, he had reached the master emerald shrine, where Knuckles and Rouge were found. Knuckles was standing cross armed in front of the huge green rock and Rouge sat cross legged on it.

Sonic walked up and greeted the two. "Yo! What's up?"

Knuckles, looking almost the same as he did years ago, uncrossed his arms and replied half heartedly. Sonic once came to him for help against Eggman a year or so back, and he obliged, but they were both still easily defeated. The red guardian was hoping that Sonic wouldn't ask again.

Rouge looked the same also, same clothes but her hair was slightly longer. She just winked at the blue hedgehog.

"Rouge, do you know where the chaos emeralds are" Sonic asked, sounding very casual.

Rouge's expression shifted from uncaring to surprised. She honestly had no idea where they were, though she had looked a few times. "What? You lost them?" Her question was filled with the surprise of the blue hedgehog's idiocy.

Knuckles looked angry now. "You fool! You have been fighting Eggman for years and you just now tell us that you have lost them?"

Sonic scratched the back of his head. "Um, well, uh… yes…"

"Idiot! Do you know what this means!?"

"Yeah. But Eggman doesn't have them. If he did, we would have heard about it by now" Sonic replied.

Rouge jumped down next to Knuckles, looking at Sonic. "If someone found them, they probably sold them, meaning they could be on all sides of the planet by now."

Sonic cursed under his breath and turned around, thinking. "Even with Tails' emerald tracker, it will still take a while to collect all of them."

Although the blue hedgehog was talking to himself, Knuckles and Rouge overheard him.

"What! Tails is alive!?" Knuckles and Rouge both looked utterly stunned.

Sonic faced them again and shrugged his shoulders. "Yeah. What did you think?" The blue hedgehog was teasing them a little. He knew that everyone thought that Tails was dead. Even he started to lose hope recently. "He's out getting the X-Tornado so we can start looking for the chaos emeralds."

Knuckles relaxed and even smiled. "The kid is as resourceful as ever, I see."

Rouge nodded in agreement. "Sonic, we will help you look for them. Where should we meet you if we find any?"

"Come to Tails' house if you find any" he said while giving them a thumbs up before dashing off back towards Tails' house.

Knuckles and Rouge started running in different directions, both being professional treasure hunters. Plus, Knuckles could always faintly sense chaos emeralds if they were relatively close.

Sonic arrived back at Tails' house to see a somewhat disheveled X-Tornado parked in front of it. He walked in to see Tails ruffling through a duffle bag on the kitchen table.

"Did Rouge or Knuckles know anything?" he asked, not even looking up at him.

"No, but they said they would help us look for them."

Tails dumped the bag out on the table, revealing a couple of fake chaos emeralds and other assorted tools. "I have all of these along with a lot that are still in my garage, so we should have enough power to hold off Eggman until we find the real ones." He then pulled a bright red one out from his tails. "And I found this one on my way back."

"Oh, damn." Sonic looked around the room, realizing that a certain pink hedgehog wasn't there anymore. "We forgot about Amy. Oh, well."

A small vein popped out in Tails' head. "Did you hear anything I just said?"

Sonic looked at him; oblivious. "Huh?"

"I'm going to send you to school when we are done with all of this" Tails said as he shoved all of the emeralds back into the bag and walked out the door. "Get in the plane."

Sonic jumped into the back seat after Tails. The young fox tossed the bag onto Sonic's lap then attempted to start the X-Tornado.

After a few failed attempts, Tails glared at the control panel. "Do I have to hit you again?"

As if the plane had ears, it jumped to life, engine fully active once again. Tails replaced the fake one with the real one he had found, then jammed the control stick forward, sending them zooming into the late afternoon sky. The jet moved with much more power with the real emerald. Soon, the radar picked up another emerald that was quite far away.

"Let's see how much this hunk of junk can put out" Tails said as he pushed the throttle all the way up, causing a great boost of acceleration.

Sonic and Tails both missed this. Searching for all of the emeralds was always a fun adventure for both of them. But it also meant that another conflict was about to arise. After five years of Eggman being in control, when Tails and Sonic started to fight back, it would shake the planet from the top of the tallest mountain to the bottom of the deepest ocean.

OOO

Back at Doctor Eggman's tower, he was hard at work on his new project. With years of developing new technology without the interruptions of that pesky hedgehog, Eggman had brushed up on his mechanical skills.

He had been working non-stop on piecing the Metarex suits back together. The armor was very simple to put together again, he just had to create an operating system to replace the aliens that had once controlled them. It now laid on a table; a complete replica of Dark Oak.

Eggman had recently acquired an emerald himself, the dark blue one. Decoe and Bocoe were quite resourceful when the blue blur wasn't trying to stop them. The two worn down robots stood silently on the other side of the room, hoping that Eggman would forget they were there.

The spherical man opened the chest compartment on the robot and placed the shining gem inside, activating the machine immediately. Eggman watched it stand up by itself and salute him.

It was still the original armor, so it had the same color, save for a few silver patches of metal that Eggman had to replace. It still had the gold sword, but had lost it's torn cape.

_Dark Egg reporting for duty. _It's voice didn't sound like Dark Oak's at all anymore. It sounded completely robot, without any trace of emotion.

The fat doctor laughed to himself then pointed to his computer screen. He had long ago noticed that a large amount of emeralds were moving quickly around the map.

"I want you to find out why those emeralds are moving so quickly and acquire them. Kill anything that gets in your way."

The robot bowed briefly. _Yes, Doctor._

The robot flew upwards through the hole that Tails had made, flying at speeds that easily outmatched Sonic in his normal state. Back when Dark Oak was controlling the armor, his speed was about on par with Super Sonic's. It would reach its objectives in a few short seconds.

OOO

Tails was flying towards his destination when suddenly a chaos emerald appeared on his radar, heading towards them at unimaginable speed. It looked like it was going to hit them, so Tails quickly dived the plane towards the ground, seeing the blur of purple and silver fly just over them. He landed the plane and jumped out after Sonic.

"What the hell is that" Tails asked, watching the speck float in the air.

Sonic got into fighting stance. "I don't know, but it's fast!"

Tails quickly grabbed the real emerald out of the cockpit, ready to use it if need be.

Meanwhile, the robot was observing the two, sending images back to Eggman and requesting orders. It could hear the doctor's reply in it's head.

"Get the emerald and kill the two pests."

The robot pulled it's sword up into ready stance. Tails focused on the speck, slowly realizing what it was. When it charged at them, he felt frozen. Frozen with fear. It was as if his nightmares had come to life. The menace from the conflict five years ago and every dream in between was now charging up to him.

The terrified fox could only manage a faint whisper. "No…"

OOO

_Okay, first of all, I apologize for the dorkiness of the robots name, but it seems to go with all of the stupid names that Eggman usually gives his robots. Also, I couldn't think of anything else at the moment._

_**Now for why I begged you to read the bottom**: I have a new story. It is in desperate need of attention, so I thought that I would conform to the strategy of power hungry corporations and put up a free advertisement in this fic, sense I KNOW that people read this one. It's called 'A Shadow Of Who I Used To Be' and it is the only other story in my 'story gallery'. I don't know if the name is just not attractive, if it is just poorly written, or if people don't like the idea, but is has been there for WEEKS and has only racked up 33 hits as of now compared to this 5000 hit monster._

_So, if you take a look, I would really appreciate it. Thanks._


	16. A Prelude To War

Ch16

_Here's an actiony (I am well aware that that is not a word) chapter for you._

_Remember, check out my other fic. I changed the name to help it look more appealing._

_Chapter 16: A Prelude To War_

OOO

"No…"

Tails couldn't move. Fear was holding him firmly in place. Dark Egg charged towards him faster than his eyes could see, and the machine barreled into the fox, sending him flying back. Luckily, he held on to the emerald.

Sonic sprung at it, but was easily swatted away by the robot's powerful, steel arm. Sonic flew back, flipping back onto his feet, rubbing his cheek.

The blue hedgehog looked at his hand, wet with blood. It had actually hit him hard enough to make his face bleed. Sonic was all to familiar with this particular machine. It was just as fast and strong as he was in super form. But it seemed that because of it being a remake, it was not quite as powerful. If it was, that hit would have knocked Sonic's spiky, blue head off. But this would still be quite a challenge.

Sonic curled into a ball, revving up. He launched forward at the purple machine at incredible velocity. He made contact with Dark Egg's sword, and the machine simply swatted him away again.

Sonic instantly felt a large portion of his back get sliced open. He flew back, but the robot wasn't done yet. Dark Egg rushed forward, getting behind Sonic and kicking him into the ground.

Sonic lay on his back in a small crater. As soon as he opened his eyes, Dark Egg came flying down, punching the defenseless blue hedgehog in the stomach, sending his further into the ground. He couldn't help but yell from the pain, coughing up a small amount of blood also. The merciless machine continued to punch, continuing to make the blue hero scream.

Tails wasn't really hurt, but still frozen with fear. He was just laying in the grass, listening to Sonic scream, until he couldn't take it anymore.

He jumped up just in time to watch Dark Egg lift his sword over the battered hedgehog, pointing the end right above his chest. It positioned itself, then thrust the blade downwards.

"CHAOS CONTROL!"

Tails bent time and space to his will, flying at the machine at full speed. And with the aid of chaos control, that was incredibly fast. The blade moved down slowly, but just before it could pierce Sonic's chest, Tails punched the robot as hard as he could. Dark Egg was sent flying back through the field, but it still gracefully landed on it's feet.

With time back to normal now, Tails stood over Sonic, emerald in hand, dark navy eyes, and white light enveloping him. The once peaceful fox's expression was completely sadistic, eyes narrow, grin showing some unnaturally sharp teeth. He did not leave for five years just to get a break, but to get strong enough to protect his friends, and now he would get a chance to prove himself.

The robot was now up in the sky, assessing damage and awaiting new orders. It had a small dent in it's chest, but was otherwise unharmed. Eggman was watching through Dark Egg's eyes, then ordered his machine to attack Tails first, as he was in possession of the emerald.

It rushed forward, heading straight for Tails and Sonic. Tails grabbed Sonic and threw him to the side in a quick yellow and blue blur, then braced himself. The robot thrust it's arm forward, but Tails simply grabbed it, stopping the machine in mid air. He placed his free hand on the chest plate of the machine where it had been dented before.

"Chaos spear!" If a small flash of light, the piece of energy turned the metal white hot, but otherwise, unharmed.

Tails realized immediately that it didn't work, so he jumped back, getting into stance. His attack may have certainly weakened the metal from the extreme heat, but it was still just a small dent.

Tails popped the rings off of his wrists and ankles, feeling ten times lighter than before. With a new sense of power, he induced chaos control, then charged forward. The robot could still see him coming and react accordingly, but not as well as before. It jumped to the side, kicking Tails in the back as he passed.

The young fox caught his balance and stopped himself in the air, floating with his Tails. This time, the machine charged, kicking Tails back to the ground. Reacting quickly, Tails rolled to the side, avoiding a stab of the gold sword, and kicked himself up, hitting the robot in the process.

Using the advantage, Tails grabbed the machine's arm as it was falling and threw it into the sky. Now using the emerald to warp, he appeared right above it in the air, kicking it back to the ground. Without giving the machine another chance to recover, he conjured up an entire wave of chaos spears. They all smashed into the ground where the machine was trapped. Before the dust could clear, Tails formed an absolutely massive one above his head and hurled it down.

A huge explosion followed, kicking up dust and debris everywhere. Tails slowly lowered himself to the ground, exhausted. His eyes still remained the dark blue color, but the white light was now only a simple glow. He had never used that much energy at once, and the only reason he was still standing was probably because of the emerald in his hands.

Soon, the dust cleared. Tails immediately stood up to his full height and tried to raise his energy level. Even if the machine was still functioning, Eggman may order it to run away if it seemed that Tails wasn't even tired. The young genius was sure that Eggman would not want this machine to be destroyed because of it's rarity.

After a few seconds, a metallic hand shot up from the ground. It slowly stood up, looking battered. It had many dents, most of which were red hot, and dirt and grass was smudged all over it's formerly lustrous body. It started to walk forwards slightly. Tails could tell it was scanning him in some way.

With a quick glance over at his beaten comrade, Sonic, Tails all the anger in the world to power up again. He gripped the emerald tight, making it illuminate a bright glow. This was exactly what Shadow told him not to do, but if he didn't, he was guaranteed to be defeated. With a deep breath, the white light returned, blazing lightly at first. His eyes darkened and even let off a supernatural glow. With a yell, the fire exploded into a blazing torrent extending a few feet from him.

"Get ready to die, you goddamn machine!"

Back inside the robot's head, it was scanning the powerhouse fox. When the report went back to Eggman, he started to curse in his chair.

"There is no way Tails should be able to generate that much chaos energy! He's almost more powerful than Shadow!"

_Requesting orders. Likelihood of defeat at enemy's current level: high._

Eggman didn't like retreating, but it was better than losing the emerald inside the robot. Plus, he had another trick up his sleeve. The genius certainly acted more like one nowadays.

"Return back to the base immediately. We'll get it next time."

_Yes, Doctor._

Tails started charging up a massive chaos spear incase the robot did decide to attack. It was just standing there for a few seconds, seeming like it was planning. With Tails' current amount of energy, the chaos spear he held may be enough to destroy it, but maybe not. And he would surely pass out afterwards. But all of his tension was eased when it started to fly away. With a sigh of relief, he dispersed the chaos spear and the fire slowly died down and his eyes turned back to their normal, aqua shade.

The exhausted kitsune rested his hands on his knees, breathing deeply. Soon, he heard footsteps coming towards him. He looked up to see Sonic walking at him, looking pretty beat up, holding his chest but had a triumphant smile nonetheless.

"Way to go, Tails! I guess Shadow was right when he was bragging about you."

Tails kept breathing heavily, struggling to speak. "Yeah… almost." With that, he fell forward, landing on his stomach, unconscious.

Sonic quickly checked to make sure he was alright and just saw that he was unconscious. He picked him up and slung him over his shoulder, then picked up the emerald that had fallen out of his hand. After placing Tails in the back of the X-Tornado, he started the engine and headed back to Tails' house.

OOO

Luckily, Sonic remembered how to fly the massive jet, and had arrived back at Tails' house in only a few minutes. When he had arrived, he found that Knuckles and Rouge were there waiting for them.

Sonic walked in with Tails on his shoulder, and after answering Knuckles' and Rouge's questions, took him upstairs and put him in bed.

"What's up, guys?" Sonic asked while walking back down.

Knuckles held out the purple emerald. "I found this in a merchant's shop in a nearby city."

Sonic knew that Knuckles probably just took it and ran, so he didn't bother asking how he got it. Rouge had a somewhat defeated response to Sonic's question.

"I located one in a different village, but Eggman's robots already had it. I'm a thief, not a fighter."

"Don't worry about it" Sonic began. "At least we know where a majority of them are. We all have two, plus a ton of fake ones, and Eggman has two himself. We're dead even."

Sonic threw himself on the couch, exhausted also from the battle. "And I wouldn't be surprised if Shadow suddenly showed up with one."

As if on cue, a bright flash filled the room, Shadow stepping out of it. He held the green emerald in his hands. "I sensed an emerald nearby, so I went to get it. However, it seems that the person I took it from was the one who found all of them and sold them, and he also had two others. The good doctor showed up just in time to take the other two before I could grab them."

Knuckles and Rouge slumped their heads and Sonic just started to look aggravated. "Damn it! We only have three and Eggman has the rest! How are we supposed to be able to beat him now?"

Shadow looked around the room. "Where is Tails? I'm sure he can think of an adequate plan."

Sonic relaxed a little and closed his eyes. "He's upstairs unconscious. Eggman had a powerful new toy that were couldn't beat. But Tails scared it away."

Shadow leaned against the wall, trying to think of something they could do sense Tails was out. After a few minutes of consideration, he decided to voice his opinion.

"Because it seems that Doctor Eggman has a powerful emerald tracker, he could show up on this doorstep any moment. I think it would be best to get as far away as possible."

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Everyone immediately turned their attention to the door, everyone stiffening up. They had no idea who it could be. It could be Eggman trying to screw with them, or a trap.

Shadow slowly walked to the door, being a quiet as possible. No one else was making any noise and standing stone still. Shadow put one hand on the knob, forming a chaos spear in the other. He twisted the knob slowly and opened it just enough to look out. What he saw was certainly not a threat, so he let the chaos spear vanish and opened the door fully, showing a small, tan rabbit and a pink hedgehog.

Cream looked up at Shadow, confused as to why he was there. But Amy knew why, so she kept quiet. "Hi. Is Tails here?" Cream asked.

Shadow opened the door and stepped to the side. "Come inside." With one last look around to make sure Eggman wasn't here yet, he closed the door.

"Damn it. Now we have two more people that Eggman can attack." Shadow had to hold back openly cursing the girls' stupidity, but he knew that there was no way they could of known, so he kept his thoughts to himself. "Whatever. Take everyone out to the X-Tornado" he said, looking at Sonic. "I'll meet you out there in a second."

Sonic was about to protest, but he knew that Shadow was right. "Come on everyone, outside!"

Knuckles and Rouge quickly ran out while Cream and Amy were a little confused.

"What's going on, Sonic?" Amy asked.

Sonic grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around, pushing her out of the door. "I'll tell you later, but we have to leave now!"

Everyone was outside standing around the X-Tornado, waiting for Shadow to come out. He ran out of the house with Tails on his shoulder just in time to see an army of robots and airships coming over the horizon.

"Everyone on the jet!" Shadow ordered then jumped up and set Tails in the driver's seat. Rouge was in the seat behind Tails and Amy and Cream were in the back. Knuckles and Sonic each Stood on a wing and Shadow stood on the nose.

"Give me you're emeralds!" He shouted to Knuckles and Sonic.

They quickly tossed them to him from the wing, Shadow catching each. The Egg Army was approaching quickly. They would arrive any moment, but they didn't seem to be interested in capturing them. Suddenly, small explosions were heard as every single ground force and airship fired a wave of missiles at them. They almost blacked out the sun as they flew through the air.

Shadow let the three emeralds orbit around him, focusing on enough energy to chaos control everyone and the X-Tornado to Tails' island. The missiles were getting closer with every second.

"Come on, Shadow!" Sonic shouted, watching in evident fear as the rockets got closer. If he wanted to, he could run away and avoid every missile sent at them, but he knew that the others would not be able to escape. Shadow was their last chance.

Everyone watched in horror as the tubes of metal got closer and closer. They filled the entire sky, showing no sun, clouds, or sky.

Shadow felt the right amount of energy and shouted the magic words. "CHAOS CONTROL!!!"

The jet and every person on it disappeared in a flash of light just as thousands of rockets smashed into the ground where they used to be. All of the surrounding area was completely destroyed, the ground, the surrounding plant life, and Tails' former house. Everything was totally destroyed.

OOO

Eggman watched from the main deck of the lead airship. He slammed his hands down on the control panel when he saw them warp away.

"Damn it! Why can't I kill those pests?"

He sat back in his chair. He did have more emeralds than they did, and he had had a brilliant idea after his machine returned. He ordered Decoe and Bocoe in.

They stumbled in, still looking like they hadn't been properly cared for in years. "Yes, Doctor!" 

"Prepare all units to return to base. Then I want you two to leave and get back there and prepare the factory." An evil grin crossed his face. "We are going to put the Dark Egg model into mass production."

The two robots saluted him and scramble out of the room.

Eggman chuckled in his chair. "If that pesky hedgehog and fox had so much trouble with one Dark Egg model, let's see how well they fare against an entire army of them!"

The evil doctor's maniacal laughter filled the room. The doctor had the upper hand, and he knew it. But he had Sonic, Tails, and even Shadow fighting against him now. For the last five years he only had Sonic to compete with. Eggman may have the upper hand, but he was still going to get hell of a fight out of them.

OOO

_I predict that this may go for maybe ten more chapters, but that is only a guess. Hope you liked._

_**----------Check out 'A Shadow Of What I Used To Be'----------**_


	17. What Friends Are For

Ch17

_Now that supports .wps files, I don't have to waste time e-mailing my documents to Zamar to have them converted. Cheers!_

_Chapter 17: What Friends Are For_

OOO

In a bright flash of light, Shadow and everyone appeared on the sandy beach of Tails' island. Everyone was covering their heads, even Sonic. They all thought that they would be hit, but Shadow saved everyone with chaos control.

The black hedgehog tossed an emerald back to Sonic and Knuckles then placed his own in his head quills. He jumped off and face the rest of the group.

"Guardian, help me carry the jet back into the woods" he said, facing Knuckles. He then faced Sonic. "You take carry Tails and everyone else follow me."

Shadow lifted the front end of the X-Tornado and Knuckles lifted the back. Shadow lead them through the trail in the forest back to the small cabin that Tails lived in. They arrived in a short amount of time, and Knuckles and Shadow set the X-Tornado down next to the cabin.

Shadow instructed Sonic to take Tails inside and lay him down. The cabin was not large enough for everyone to be inside at once, so everyone besides Tails was outside. Shadow faced everyone to explain how they were going to do things.

"We may have escaped the doctor for now, but he will soon find this island because of the three emeralds on it, but not for at least several days." Everyone started to look a little afraid, with the exception of Sonic. "Tails should wake up in a few hours, and then he will help us formulate a plan. But until then, we will all be stuck here. This island has plenty of food, and the men will sleep outside, except for Tails until he wakes up."

The sky was now starting to glow orange and yellow from the sun going down. Shadow started to walk away and jumped into a nearby tree, lazily resting on a branch.

"Might as well get some shuteye" Sonic commented while jumping into a tree next to Shadow.

Sonic wanted to talk to his dark counterpart about something really quick.

"Hey Shadow?"

Shadow didn't open his eyes but replied. "What do you want?"

"I saw the huge plant inside of the cabin" Sonic began. "What do you think it will sprout into?"

Shadow had been recently thinking about this himself. The plant was as big as he and Tails now, but it had yet to bloom or open up. "I think when you plant a rose seed, you expect a rose to grow, not a tulip. I would assume the same goes for alien plants."

"So you think that-"

"Quiet yourself!" Shadow cut off Sonic form speaking his thoughts. "I know Tails has had these thoughts also, but if he were to hear them from someone else, his hopes would rise. I don't know if I am right, but it would be better if we said nothing and it did happen, than if we did say something and it didn't happen."

Sonic understood and looked away, looking for sleep. "I understand."

Knuckles jumped back into the X-Tornado and kicked his feet up in the cockpit, while Amy, Cream, and Rouge walked into the cabin. Cream looked over at Tails, who was still out cold. He had the most blank expression on his face as he slept, like he wasn't dreaming.

That wasn't entirely correct. Tails was dreaming.

_He was sitting cross legged in the middle of a black void. His eyes were closed and his arms rested on his legs. _

_Tails never really had the chance to dream anymore. He almost never slept for fear of nightmares. The only times he ever truly rested was when he passed out, such as now. Dreaming now was a somewhat enjoyable experience for him right now. He had peace, tranquility, and he could feel himself healing._

_As the young fox sat there, he thought. Dark Oak had been resurrected. The same power that threatened the universe was now walking on his planet. Even if it was under some sort of control, it was still incredibly dangerous. It tried to eliminate all animal life, forced the death of countless people, including Cosmo._

_Tails opened his eyes. The girl from his thoughts was standing in front of him. He started to get angry, but the assumed ghost did something it never did: moved. She walked towards him and kneeled down so she was eye to eye with him._

"_Hello, Tails."_

_Tails speechless for a moment, but he eventually replied. "Hi, Cosmo. It's good to see you again."_

_She smiled and nodded. Tails took her hand in his and looked deep into her eyes. "I missed you so much. I don't know how I've gotten by without you."_

_Cosmo was smiling, but a steady stream of tears dripped down her face. "Me too. I told you to look for me standing right beside you."_

"_I did, but you weren't there. What I saw next to me wasn't you, no matter how much it did look like you." _

_Tails looked down at the ground, trying to hide his glistening eyes. Tails was starting to feel more and more detached from where he was, almost as if he was waking up. Cosmo lifted his chin up so he would look at her._

"_We will see each other again, I promise" she said while wiping a tear from Tails' cheek._

_Everything started to disperse and fade into bright, white light. Cosmo started to fade away, also. "Goodbye."_

Tails opened his eyes. He could feel the morning sun on him and hear birds chirping outside. Last night was one of the few nights that he slept well. The dream was maybe even a little comforting. He slowly started to sit up and looked around the room, realizing that he was not at his old home.Amy and Cream were in the other bed and Rouge hung from the ceiling, all sleeping.

He wanted to know what was going on, so he got up quietly and walked out of the front door. This was definitely his island, but why was he here? With a quick look around, he noticed the rest of his friends here also. Why was the X-Tornado, the girls, Sonic, and Knuckles all here? Something important must have happened.

Tails knew that Shadow would know, so he flew up to the branch where Shadow was laying. "I want to know what's going on."

Shadow wasn't asleep, and jumped down from the branch. "Some very interesting things have happened since your nap." Shadow went on to explain everything that had happened, including the destruction of his old house.

Tails leaned against the trunk of the tree and crossed his arms, obviously aggravated with the current situation. "So we need a plan, then." Tails sighed and started to think. "Eggman does not have the master emerald, does he?"

"No, I don't think so. He has never truly been interested in it. I don't think he will try to get it."

Tails had the beginning of a plan in his head. "Good. I doubt that Eggman's assault got deep enough to touch the blue typhoon, and the master emerald is what powers it. That is a good thing to have."

Shadow took his emerald out of his quills. "Chaos control." He vanished in a flash of light, but retuned in a few seconds, the master emerald held above his head. He tossed the giant gem onto the beach. "Now we have the same amount of gems that Eggman has."

"Plus all of my fake ones" Tails added.

Knuckles walked up to the giant gem and observed it, making sure it was the real deal. He gave Tails and Shadow a nod then walked away, back to sleep.

"I thought his reaction would be a little more involved" Shadow said.

Tails just shook his head. "I guess he's finally getting sick of taking care of it." He then walked to the edge of the small lake. "I will start thinking of a plan. If you or anyone else has an idea, I'd like to hear it."

Shadow nodded and walked away, jumping back into his tree. While Tails was standing there, he put his black rings back on, feeling the familiar weight that they brought. He stood there for about half an hour before he started to hear everyone moving around and waking up.

Sonic walked up next to Tails and looked out at the lake also. "So this is where you've been."

Tails just nodded and kept his eyes on the water. He had tried thinking of a plan, but a few minutes before Sonic came up, he started to just daydream. A very small part of a plan was made, but it was only a rough idea.

"I have an idea. We have the master emerald and the blue typhoon, and we can use them to assault Eggman's army. But I doubt that that alone could stop him."

Sonic looked over at him with a raised brow. "That's the best you can think of? You usually would have had an elaborate and sophisticated plan drawn out by now."

"Heh. Yeah, but I'm a bit rusty in the planning department" Tails replied while scratching the back of his head with an embarrassed expression. "Plus, the only way to beat Eggman would be to get him away from the emeralds, and the only way we can do that would be to forcibly take them. Afterwards, I'm sure you and Shadow would have no problem destroying his empire."

"Have you forgotten us?"

Tails turned around to see Knuckles and Rouge walking over to him. They stopped right next to him, giving him friendly smiles.

"You have a professional thief and treasure hunter standing right in front of you. We could have those emeralds back by nightfall" Rouge pointed out.

Tails had thought about this but had already found it to be a bad idea. "I'm sorry, Rouge. Even if you could get onto Eggman's ship undetected, he most likely has the emeralds in some sort of robot and you would not be able to defeat it." He then looked over at Sonic. "It seems that Eggman's mechanical skills have increased over the years. One of those machines in particular is a remake of Dark Oak. It could easily kill you both."

Knuckles and Rouge both sulked a little. The news that Dark Oak has been remade made them believe that they couldn't do it. And Tails knew that the Metarex remake would have no problem seeking them both out and killing them.

Tails started to walk away from the three. He walked over to the X-Tornado and grabbed the duffle bag. If they were going to assault Eggman, they would need the X-Tornado, and in it's current shape, it wouldn't last long. After finding a few tools, he pulled a panel off of the side and started playing with the inside, hoping to at least temporarily restore it to it's former glory.

Sonic faced the other two. "So that's the new Tails for you" he said, shrugging his shoulders.

"I can tell that he's gotten much stronger" Knuckles said. "He certainly has adopted some of Shadow's… uh… unique traits."

"I think he's just fine" Rouge commented. "He's done pretty well considering all that has happened to him."

Sonic looked over at Tails working on the X-Tornado, a prideful smile on his face. "I agree. He isn't the innocent little fox we used to know, but he is Tails nonetheless. He is certainly more of a hero that I was at his age."

Everyone was just milling around the general area. Tails had yet to think of a full plan, and was the only one working at the moment. No one else had any idea how to help and when they asked, Tails just replied "Get some rest and enjoy yourself. We have a tough day tomorrow."

Sonic would occasionally try to talk to Shadow, only to annoy the darker hedgehog, but mostly ran around the island to kill time. Shadow stayed on his branch, pretending to be asleep so no one would bug him. Knuckles would stand by the master emerald with Rouge, occasionally socializing with her. Amy would just walk around, looking for Sonic but trying to not let other people notice. Cream would go out and look for fruit to bring back to the site. When she brought back an assortment of berries and other multicolored fruit back on a giant leaf, everyone had grabbed at least something to eat. Except for Tails.

Tails kept working on the X-Tornado, occasionally messing up in someway and would mutter a few choice four letter words. Cream noticed that he had been working nonstop and decided to bring him some fruit on a plate-sized leaf.

"Tails?"

The young fox wiped some sweat off of his forehead and moved his bangs away as his face then turned around.

Cream set the leaf down on a tree stump next to them. "Take a break and eat something. You've been working all day."

Tails gave her a warm smile and set down the wrench that was in his hand. "Thanks, Cream" he said wile grabbing a handful of grapes. 

Cream watched him eat the small handful and waited for him to finish before talking to him. "How is the X-Tornado?"

Tails leaned against the plane, giving an agitated look at the place where he had been working. "Well it will run, but it's very dirty and old inside. A lot of things should be replaced, but I don't have the necessary materials." He then placed the panel back on and screwed it into place. "But it will have to do."

"Are you really going to try and fight off Doctor Eggman's entire army? Not even Sonic could beat him!"

Tails moved his bangs back out of his face and chuckled a little. "I have to try, Cream. Otherwise he will take over the planet. And besides, now Shadow and Knuckles have joined the fight."

"And me!" The younger rabbit jumped up and pumped her fist into the air, smiling wide.

However, Tails had other plans. "Absolutely not. I will not risk you. Tomorrow morning I plan on taking you back home before we begin, along with Amy and Rouge."

Tails then saw Amy and Rouge walk up behind Cream, Amy hoisting her hammer on her shoulder and Rouge cracking her knuckles.

Amy pointed her hammer at Tails with a mischievous grin on her face. "Don't even think about leaving us out of this one."

"Yeah. Just because we're women doesn't mean we can help kick Eggman's ass" Rouge added with the same grin as Amy.

"We're going to help you, like it or not" Cream said. "That's just what friends do!"

Soon Sonic, Knuckles, and even Shadow had come up, each bearing their own unique smile.

"Yeah, Tails. Everyone is going to do all that they can." Sonic stated while walking past the girls and standing next to him. "All of your friends are here to help, even Shadow." At this point even Shadow was smiling a little, though he was trying not to be noticed by closing his eyes and lowering his head. "Tomorrow when your fighting Eggman's army, all of us are going to be standing right behind you."

Everyone let out cheers of agreement. Tails just smiled at them all, remembering how great of friends he had. He looked over the group of his now cheering friends. Shadow caught his eye, and the black hedgehog gave him a quick thumbs up before walking away.

"Alright everyone! Prepare for tomorrow and get some sleep" Tails shouted out. "We've got a big day tomorrow!"

OOO

_Expect the next one to have much more action in it. It's going to be insane, but will take a while to write, so give me two or three weeks._

_See ya! _


	18. Let The War Begin

_Ch18_

_Sorry this took so long. I was on spring break for a week and I just got my drivers license, so I was out a lot._

_Chapter 18: Let The War Begin_

* * *

Deep in the confines of his tower, Doctor Eggman sat in front of his computer, subconsciously playing with his mustache. After the other day's failure, Eggman himself had returned to his base until his robotic scouts had found the remaining three emeralds. The entirety of his army was actually at the base and only small scouting ships searched the planet. His plan was to send in his army once he had located Tails and his emeralds, wisely keeping his army here to defend his base.

Although Eggman, with his ego, really doubted that that was necessary due to his latest mechanical accomplishment. He had four emeralds, one of which was inside of Dark Egg, along with three other new toys. Eggman had reconstructed the other three Metarex kings to the best of his ability. The only king he had not remade was Red Pine, as he was sucked into a black hole and left no parts behind. He had only recovered a few pieces from Yellow Zelcova, and was mostly made of Eggman's own parts, but Black Narcissus and Pale Bay Leaf were reconstructed to the same standard as the former Dark Oak. Being not so creative with names, the spherical doctor simply named them Yellow Egg, Black Egg, and Pale Egg.

Another strength that Eggman had was many different reconstructions of his Dark Egg. Though not as powerful due to having none of the original parts or any chaos emeralds, they were still very deadly in their own right. An entire army of remade Metarex machines was at his command, and he was just itching to use it.

The doctor continued to mindlessly play with his mustache while observing his computer for any new information.

"I will get you, you pesky fox."

* * *

Tails slept like a rock in the cockpit of his tornado. He had advised everyone to go to bed early, as they would be getting up early. Everyone was in the same spots that they were in the other night, aside from Tails moving outside to let Cream have his bed. The first rays of sunshine peaked over the treetops, making the yellow fox slowly open his eyes.

Last night was one of the few nights that he willingly slept, but he knew he would need his strength today. Plus, he had no nightmares and actually slept quite peacefully, so he was completely refreshed.

He jumped out of the open cockpit and started walking around, waking people up. Shadow was really the only one who didn't complain, but Tails didn't believe he was sleeping in the first place. Once everyone was up and waiting near the lake's edge, Tails spoke to them.

"Everyone either on or in the X-Tornado. Don't bring anything you don't need."

Everyone did as they were told, Amy, Cream, and the master emerald in the plane with Sonic, Knuckles, Shadow, and Tails standing on the wings. Tails had his duffle bag full of fake emeralds and Shadow had their three emeralds orbiting around him.

"Take us to my house, Shadow" Tails said after making sure everyone was on.

Shadow closed his eyes, causing the emeralds' orbit to increase in speed. "Chaos control!" In a flash of light, they reappeared at their destination.

Tails could see the devastation that Eggman's attack had done earlier. His former home was entirely gone, but that didn't entirely bother him. Without a word, he walked over to the base of what looked like his garage. After thinking for a brief moment, making sure that this was the spot, he started to dig around the debris around him. It didn't take long until he felt something like a handle. With a satisfied smirk, he yanked the handle up, opening a hole in the earth, leading down to his secret garage where the blue typhoon was kept.

"Knuckles, come with me and bring the master emerald. Everyone else, stand back." With that, he jumped into the darkness.

It didn't take long to find a light switch. With a flick, Tails lit up the entire garage, exposing the massive blue starship. Just like he had predicted, it fared much better than the tornado. It had no rust, no dents, probably because of it being protected from the elements. It looked only slightly dusty.

Tails instructed Knuckles to put the master emerald in it's place while he headed to the control deck. When he arrived, he spoke on the intercom to the engine room. "Is the master emerald in place, Knuckles?"

The echidna in question, after trying to remember how to operate the intercom, answered. "Yeah. It's ready to go, Tails."

Tails then sat up at the captain's seat, slightly too big for it. He made a mental note to enlarge it when he had the opportunity. After sitting, he pressed a large red button, getting the large ship to rumble slightly. After a short while of vibration, it came to life with a large revving noise. Tails could not help but smile, pressing a few buttons that would open the hatch above and lift the ship out.

Everyone above was waiting patiently for something to happen. Sonic was about to run down and see what was going on before he felt a vibration under his feet. He saw the ground in front of him start to tremble and split apart. Metal doors soon exposed themselves, ripping through the earth that was beneath them. After they had completely opened, the Blue Typhoon started to slowly reveal itself, stopping only inches above the ground, hovering.

Tails walked to the nose of the ship, looking down at everyone. "Come on up. It works just fine!" he called down to them.

Everyone either jumped or flew up to the ships deck, waiting for Tails to lead them inside, but Sonic approached him. The blue hedgehog looked at him with proud eyes, smiling brightly.

"Listen, Tails. I knew that you were planning on using the X-Tornado, but…" Sonic paused in his sentence, thinking hard about what he was about to say. "… I have realized and accepted the fact that you and Shadow are more capable fighters than I." Sonic took a deep breath. "And sense I am the only person besides you who knows how to fly it, I think you should fight on the ground with Shadow, and I should fly the X-Tornado."

Tails felt his spine tingle at Sonic's words. The greatest hero on his planet had just deemed him a more capable fighter. His idol, his friend, his hero had just admitted to being less powerful than himself. The young fox was dumbfounded, as were the rest of the group, even Shadow, to a certain degree, had changed his expression.

"Look, Tails. For the past five years I have been loosing, then you come along and do what I couldn't do. You broke into Eggman's base and rescued Cream, you were able to drive his new machine away when all I could do was get pummeled by it." Sonic placed a hand on the yellow fox's shoulder. "Please let me do this."

After a second of thinking, Tails replaced his surprised look with a smile and nodded. "Okay, but on one condition."

Sonic took his hand off and smiled. "What?"

"Don't get killed."

The blue hedgehog couldn't help but laugh a little. "Me? Come on! I'll be fine."

Tails smiled and extended his hand. Sonic reached out and they shook hands. "Good luck, Sonic."

"Good Luck, Tails." With that, Sonic turned around and jumped off of the deck and into the X-Tornado, waiting for the Blue Typhoon to take off so he could follow it.

Tails faced the rest of the group. "Cream, Rouge and Amy, come with me." Tails ran off into the ship, the girls following him. They arrived in the deck, and Tails assigned them spots: Rouge on pilot, Amy on attack, and Cream on defense. He did build the ship when he was only 9, so he had it customized for a child of that age to use, so after a moment of simple instructions for each one on how to use their station, Tails ran back out to the nose of the ship next to Shadow.

"Your friend's words are wise" Shadow said, his arms crossed and head lowered, trying to hid a smirk.

Tails assumed that Shadow was referring to when Sonic admitted that Shadow was better than him. "He may have admitted your superiority briefly, but he could still give you quite a run for your money."

"I wasn't taking about me."

Tails looked over at the dark hedgehog curiously. Did Shadow agree with Sonic, because Tails honestly thought that Sonic was better than him and that he was just second guessing his own abilities after being beaten for five years. Shadow replied with a small smirk, something that he rarely displayed.

Although they didn't act it that much, the two were great friends. Tails hated to admit it, but Shadow almost filled the spot that Sonic was unable to occupy after he had run away. Shadow just never would act like it in the presence of others, as it would betray his character to the rest of the group, and Tails acted the same way for the same reason, not wanting to expose Shadow's slightly caring side. The older hedgehog had trained him, comforted him in his own special way of smacking him out of his rare guilt trips, and guided him through his hardest times. Shadow had raised him in a way. Maybe not in the way of a parent, but in the way of an older brother, the way Sonic used to when Tails was still around him, except in a slightly tougher way.

Tails just smiled and turned around to face the bridge, giving a thumbs up, signaling that everything was ready. Rouge, using her knowledge, slowly lifted the starship off of the ground. It no longer trembled, but actually rose up nice and smooth. Once they were high enough, the ship started to move forward, towards Eggman's base.

* * *

Eggman was beginning to fall asleep at his desk, but a small blip caught his attention. It indicated that three emeralds were heading towards him, two right next to each other and one moving around the others. Eggman's first guess was that Sonic was carrying them with him and Tails was flying his jet over him. He wasn't that far off.

He jumped out of his seat and laughed out loud. "Hahaha! They brought them right to me. Foolish animals!"

He pressed a large button and his Egg Mobile appeared from above. He used it to fly through the halls and to the outside of his base, where his massive starship was waiting for him. Once inside, he started pressing more buttons, readying his army. After a few seconds, he could see the Blue Typhoon in the distance as well as the X-Tornado buzzing around it.

Robots flooded out of the base, thousands upon thousands of them. They were all replicas of Dark Oak, except slightly smaller in size and were completely red with some yellow. The original stood on the nose of Eggman's ship, along with the other three Metarex Kings. His army was ready to wreak havoc upon whoever dared to oppose it.

Once the Blue Typhoon was close enough, Eggman could see Tails and Shadow standing on the nose. Eggman brought a microphone near his face, ringing his voice out through speakers on his ship.

"Well, well, well. It looks like you have saved me the trouble of looking for the rest of the emeralds." A monitor zoomed in on Tails and Shadow and could also pick the sound that they made. "Though I am curious as to why Sonic is flying your prized jet as opposed you yourself, Tails."

"It was a request" Tails answered loudly, knowing that the doctor could hear him.

Eggman put all joking aside for now. "Hand over your emeralds and I'll let you simply fly away without so much as a single bullet fired."

Tails grinned, which appeared on the monitor in Eggman's ship. The young fox slowly removed the black rings off of his wrists and ankles, then held out his arm, chaos spear in hand. With a small wind up, the yellow arrow of energy flew through the air and struck the closest dark oak replica dead on from thousands of yards away. The light went straight through the metal and caused a small explosion followed by a bunch of pieces of the robot to fall to the ground.

Tails' smile only grew wider to show his teeth. "Come and take them!"

Eggman saw the spear fly all the way over to his robot and effectively kill it. He knew it was one hell of a shot, but his frustration overtook his amazement. "Have it your way, fox! All units, prepare to attack!"

Back on the nose of the Blue Typhoon, Tails and Shadow were waiting for whatever was coming. Shadow turned his head over to Tails.

"Was that really necessary?"

Tails chuckled a little. "I guess not, but I bet it surprised him a little."

Shadow took his green emerald out of his quills and gripped it tightly. "No turning back now. But you know what to do if you get hit."

Tails also pulled out his emerald out, the white one. "Yeah. Wipe the blood from my chin and get in with my day."

The two jumped off of the nose and started running towards the army, emeralds in hand. Sonic flew not too far behind them, placing his blue emerald in the slot on the control panel. Knuckles kept summoning power from the master emerald while Rouge moved the ship forward, Amy got ready to fire all that they had, and Cream was ready to deploy the shield if it was needed. They were all fighting for the betterment of their planet once again. They were all ready to fight against an enemy who was much more powerful than them. The war had started.

* * *

_I know some of you were expecting a large amount of mayhem this chapter. At the moment I cant remember if I promised it or not, but the next chapter will have a lot of action in it. Sorry for leaving you with such a teasing cliffhanger, but I felt like ending the chapter here._

_See ya in a week or two. (Or three or four…)_


	19. Total Chaos

_Uh… yeah._

_I have a whole list of excuses why I haven't updated in forever. School finals, the beginning of summer, vacations, GTAIV, Guitar Hero 3, the Red Wings, and other generally lazy things kept me away for a long time. _

_Anyways, here you go._

_Chapter 19: Total Chaos_

OOO

Tails and Shadow crashed into the first wave of robots, the chaos energy around them blowing dozens of robots aside at a time like they were mere toys. They stopped in the middle of the army and started attacking ground forces one by one.

Tails jumped into the air to avoid gunfire and snapped his rings off in mid-air. He came crashing down on one machine and reduced it to scrap metal. Before another one beside him could fire, a chaos spear shot off of the fox's hand and blew it to pieces. Tails continued to punch and kick robots around with ease, using chaos control every once in a while to avoid attack.

Shadow, on the other hand, was using chaos attacks left and right. The black hedgehog always had a chaos spear ready in each hand, teleporting back and forth while obliterating every machine in his sight. He kept his rings on to keep his stamina, and it seemed that his stamina would last forever. After the decimation of dozens of robots, the ultimate life form wasn't even breaking a sweat.

In the sky, Sonic was doing his part. The silver jet swooped over the legions of moving metal, shooting missiles and machine gun fire everywhere. The robots were unable to dodge or hit the X-Tornado as it streaked across the sky.

"I may not be having as much fun as I would be on the ground, but I'm causing just as much damage" the blue hedgehog said to himself, a smirk on his face.

Back in the Blue Typhoon, Amy, Rouge, Cream, and Knuckles were doing their part. Rouge kept the ship steady as they slowly moved across the battlefield. Amy kept a steady fire with the rockets, taking out small groups at a time while Cream made sure to activate the shield when Eggman's army made their own attacks. Knuckles, down in the engine room, kept a steady flow of power coming from the master emerald, keeping the Blue Typhoon functioning at it's best.

It seemed that the heroes would win the battle at this current rate. Eggamn's army was not putting up nearly as good a fight as they previously thought. But the aforementioned doctor would not let his army be defeated so easily. Sitting in the control room of his starship, Eggman was watching the battle on the monitors around him.

He had not the look of disappointment or anger, but one of amusement. While drumming his fingers excitedly on the arm of his chair, he let out a small chuckle. "Haha. They think they can win. Have they already forgotten of my new project?" Pulling a microphone close to his face, he gave new commands. "Dark Egg, I want you to get down there and take care of those pesky, multicolored animals."

_Yes, Doctor._

The foursome of robots at the nose of the ship then jumped off, all flying towards the battle, with the exception of Dark Zelcova, who could not fly.

On the bridge of the Blue Typhoon, Rouge noticed something heading towards them.

"What's that?"

With a closer look, she recognized the four machines.

"What? The Metarex!?"

Down in the engine room, Knuckles heard Rouge over a speaker. This immediately caught his attention. He ran over to the speaker and spoke into it. "The Metarex? Is Yellow Zelcova there?"

After a short second, the speaker buzzed again briefly. "Um… kind of. What's left of him."

Knuckles tensed at the thought. Zelcova was dead. How could he be fighting outside?

"Listen Rouge, I am going to go out there and help them. If the Metarex and Yellow Zelcova are back, they will need my help."

"Fine, just hurry back. We're not as protected without you controlling the master emerald."

Knuckles quickly ran of without another word, heading out to the battlefield.

Back on the ground, Shadow and Tails were continuing their fight. It had become somewhat more difficult and they were both being pushed into the center of the clearing they had created. Soon, they were back to back, throwing chaos spears at their enemies to keep them back.

"You ready for something big?" Shadow asked, letting his emerald float around him and Tails.

Tails let go of his also, his white emerald also orbiting around the both of them now. "Yeah. Lets go!"

The robots were closing in on them, raising their weapons to end the fight. Tails and Shadow jumped into the air, the two emeralds a blur as they spun around. A red light started to radiate around them, forming into a small bubble.

"CHAOS BLAST!"

The small bubble expanded and shot out all around Tails and Shadow, destroying every robot in it's reach. The red energy tore through metal like it was tissue paper, destroying the hundreds of robots that were closing in on them.

After the red bubble disappeared, they both fell back to the ground, each catching his own emerald. As they looked around, they saw that there were not that many robots left. A couple hundreds of yards away, there were only a few, but they didn't last long as Sonic flew over head and blew them to smithereens.

"That was far too easy" Shadow said with a tone of suspicion in his voice.

"I agree. We haven't seen Dark Oak yet, and he is the biggest threat.."

Shadow's suspicions were confirmed as four small dots came flying towards them from the ship that hovered next to Eggman's tower. When they came into view, he recognized each one immediately.

They all stopped in front of Tails and Shadow, another legion of machines behind them that poured out of the tower. It seemed that it could have been even more that before. Knuckles also joined the battle, stopping next to his two companions. Immediately, the red echidna pointed to the Yellow Zelcova remake.

"Dibs on the big, dumb one."

Shadow's red eyes glared right at the Pale Bay Leaf remake, clearly remembering that it was he who destroyed Molly. "Whatever you like, guardian. I want him" he said pointing to his new rival.

Sonic flew over head, opening the cockpit and calling out to them as he passed. "Leave Narcissus for me!"

Tails crossed his arms and squeezed the emerald in his hand, the white gem's glow intensifying. "I guess that leaves Dark Oak for me" he said to himself quietly.

Each machine jumped forwards towards their target, with Black Narcissus flying up to chase Sonic.

In the air, the remade black Metarex king was trailing after Sonic. Narcissus reached his hand out and grabbed the back, digging it's sharp claws into the steel like nails through wood. Sonic looked behind and saw him hanging on and eventually climb completely up.

"Oh, no you don't. I haven't forgotten about what you did to my friends, and this time there won't be enough pieces of you left to fix you!"

The blue hedgehog jammed the control stick to the side, barrel rolling. After a couple of fast spins, he looked back to see if he had shaken him off. When he didn't see him, he raised a brow. "That was too easy." As soon as he turned his head back, Narcissus' mirror-staff came crashing down on the outside of the cockpit, cracking the glass but not breaking it.

"Woah!"

Sonic did a few more barrel rolls, trying to shake Narcissus off of him. When he realized that it was no use, he got an idea. Slowly and carefully, the X-Tornado lost altitude and turned over. "If I can't shake you off, I'll scrape you off!" Slowly, the jet came into close contact with the ground, with Narcissus clinging more closely to the jet to avoid the earth that threatened to scrape him right off. Sonic watched as the black machine hit the ground and violently rolled over the glass and off of the plane. Then he quickly turned back over and regained his altitude.

"Like scraping a wad of gum off of your shoe" the blue hedgehog snickered to himself.

On the ground, Knuckles was dealing with the muscle of the Metarex kings. The red echidna was currently dodging punches and countering with a few of his own, but neither fighter seemed to be slowing down.

"What's the point of fighting me again? I beat you last time!"

The machine just buzzed and made a few beeping noises before charging again. This robot was no longer Yellow Zelcova at heart. The alien that had previously been in control was dead, and the armor was not able to respond with any sarcastic remarks and was now not able to be held back by foolish pride as it had been. Too bad for Knuckles, he expected it to retort with something cocky, but was instead punched across the face and sent flying a long ways back.

Over with Shadow, the battle was much more intense. Pale Bay Leaf and the black hedgehog were leaping at each other and constantly knocking each other back. The fight was very even until the robotic fighter used his trump card: two long blades that materialized out of nowhere. It used both blades to lash out, but Shadow quickly chaos controlled away.

When the dark hedgehog reappeared, he quickly threw a chaos spear, but Pale Bay Leaf stepped to the side and slashed it into two pieces, each of which burst into nothing after contact.

"I will not allow you to carry on your evil deeds, Metarex scum!"

Pale Bay Leaf didn't respond but only made a few beeping noises as Zelcova had.

"Hmph. I see that you are not the same thing I fought five years ago, but I'm still going tear you apart!"

Shadow dashed forward, turning into nothing but a black blur. The robot lifted its swords up and swung at the blur. A small clang sound was heard before both parties stopped moving. Shadow appeared behind Pale Bay Leaf, on his knees, breathing heavily. There were two large slash marks across his chest, each dripping with blood. The Metarex also took a hit, a large gash in its side from where Shadow had forced a chaos spear through it.

Shadow turned around and stood to his full height, ignoring the x-shaped cut on his chest. "It ends now" he stated calmly, as if his words guaranteed his victory. He slowly removed the rings on his wrists and tossed them aside.

As soon as the metallic sound of rings hitting the ground was heard, Shadow knocked Pale Bay Leaf straight into the air in a flash of yellow. The black hedgehog, with emerald in hand, warped behind it and spin dashed the helpless robot into the ground with tremendous force.

Shadow landed gracefully on the ground, standing to his full height. It seemed that the black hedgehog was winning for now, but the cuts on his chest were still bleeding and every move he made was overloaded with extra power, power that had been previously restrained by his rings. His energy was slowly dropping, but Shadow made sure not to look it.

A couple of yards away, the most intense battle was starting. Tails and Dark Egg were constantly crashing into each other, Tails struggling to keep up with the machines unbelievable speed. The yellow fox received a punch to the face and flew to the ground back first. Dark Egg came flying down to him, sword in hand, but Tails rolled out of the way just before the steel blade sliced into the ground where he was milliseconds ago.

Tails regained his footing and waited for the machine to act. He gripped his emerald tightly in his hand, white light radiating from it. The power circulated through his body, keeping him alert and focused. It was warm, but after a quick look around to see his friends getting hurt, particularly the two cuts on Shadow's chest, the energy started to feel hot. White hot.

Sky blue eyes darkened into navy, and the white light of the emerald surrounded him like blazing white fire. "Eggman! I will never ley you get away with this!" he called out.

The doctor's voice rang through the surrounding area, coming from speakers on the main starship. "Ho ho ho. Tails, my dear boy, you had a very difficult time trying to kill a plant, I doubt that you can even begin to stop me."

Tails' mouth dropped, as did everyone else's that heard Eggman's cruel words. Even Shadow looked over to Tails, knowing that he would either break down in tears, or go bezerk and try to kill everything in sight. The ultimate life form was leaning towards the later.

The white light around Tails started to grow and blaze even more like an out of control fire. His eyes narrowed, and his unhinged jaw slowly closed and his teeth were completely exposed, a low growl coming from his mouth.

"CHAOS CONTROL!"

He flew forwards and kicked Dark Egg in the head, sending it flying into the air. Using his tails to fly up, Tails quickly zoomed behind him and sent him plummeting back to the ground with a metal twisting punch. The enraged kitsune's hand started to glow more intensely than the rest of his body, totally engulfing his hand in yellow flames. Without a seconds hesitation, a chaos spear as big as he was flew from his hand and collided with the ground.

Blinding white light engulfed the entire battlefield, silhouetting everything. The blast created a strong gust that knocked all of the smaller robots down, made the X-Tornado vibrate in the sky, and even pushed Knuckles back a couple of steps. Only Shadow stood his ground, but had to cover his eyes to protect them from the blinding light and dust that came flying everywhere.

Soon, everything settled and the dust cleared. Tails slowly lowered himself to the ground, keeping his white aura and strong composure. His unnaturally navy eyes scanning for any sort of movement in a small crater that was in front of him. His ears twitched as Doctor Eggman's speakers sparked to life.

"Very impressive, fox-boy. But your little temper tantrum did noting more than cover my robot in dust." As Eggman said this, Dark Egg slowly emerged from the crater, unscathed. "You see, Tails, Sonic wasn't able to defeat this particular machine with all seven chaos emeralds, and you only have one!"

Tails gritted his teeth, concentrating on angry thoughts to keep his power from fading. Everything about him looked ready to fight again. However, if you looked close enough, you could see a small stream of sweat rolling from his brow and his breathing was deep and greedy for fresh oxygen. In his rage, he had used a significant about of power, and the chaos emerald could only help him recover so fast. At the moment, the yellow kitsune was exhausted, and Eggman new it.

"Attack!"

The mechanical menace wasted no time and flew forwards, tackling Tails into the ground. The young fox rolled backwards and flipped Dark Egg off of him, attempting to kick it also, but missed.

Tails landed in ready position, catching a punch that almost hit him in the face. However, he had to used both hands to block the powerful blow, so the Metarex kicked the young fox in his exposed stomach.

"Damn it" he cursed weakly as he fell to his knees, holding his stomach.

_Super Sonic could not defeat this thing, so what makes me think I can?_

Tails felt himself lift from the ground, cold, metal hands wrapping around his neck. He tried desperately to break free, but could not. With a chaos spear in each hand, he shoved the two balls of yellow energy into the sides of Dark Egg's head. No matter how hard Tails pushed or how much energy he put out, the robot's grip remained strong.

The yellow fox cursed loudly and demanded to be let down, but the response he got was getting thrown down on his back. Unfortunately, his head slammed against the hard ground. Soon, everything for Tails started to get blurry, then dark. The white emerald in his hand slowly rolled out of his limp grip.

Dark Egg walked forward and slowly and picked up the emerald.

Up in the control room of Eggman's starship, the maniacal doctor laughed out loud at his presumed victory.

"Hahahaha! That stupid fox boy really thought he could defeat my greatest creation to date?" An evil smile stretched across his lips and he leaned forward so his mouth was close to his microphone. "Finish him, Dark Egg."

The command rung out throughout the area and everyone briefly looked over at Dark Egg, who raised his sword high above his head, ready to send it crashing down through Tails.

The golden blade started to descend, cutting through the air and down to Tails' chest.

Suddenly, a golden streak plowed into the Metarex with such force that wind started to swirl around the area, kicking up dust and other debris and tossing it all over the place.

Shadow, who had expected to fly right through, felt pain all throughout his body as like Dark Egg didn't even move. Shadow pulled his fist slowly away from the cold metal, no dents at all present. The bewildered hedgehog looked up to see the white emerald that he had taken from Tails glowing brightly in it's grasp.

The second emerald's power had dramatically increased the Metarex's power, and Dark Oak demonstrated this by kicking Shadow in the stomach, sending him flying backwards, with seemingly no effort.

The dark hedgehog slowly stood, wincing from the great pain that was now in his gut. Luckily, he had held on to his emerald, and focused on pulling as much out of it as he could.

He started to look around, assessing his situation: Pale Bayleaf and Dark Egg stood in front of him, ready to attack him. Tails was out cold for the time being and had lost his emerald, Narcissus was still putting a lot of pressure on Sonic, as was Zelcova on Knuckles, and even the girls had begun to take fire from Eggman's starship. As for himself, he was starting to feel the fatigue.

Shadow took his hand off of his stomach and stood to his full height, pointing at the large starship mingling in the sky. "As long as I breathe, I will keep fighting!"

In the sky, Eggman left the control room and stood on the outside of the ship, overlooking the battle. He stood tall with a sense of control radiating from him. After hearing Shadow's bold statement, he couldn't help but smile. The battle was obviously going his way, and one of his main concerns was already taken care of.

He pointed his gloved hand down at Shadow from high up in the sky. "Then I will make sure that all breath leaves your body before the end of the day!"

OOO

_I hope to be much more efficient with updates for the remainder of this fiction, but as you can see, I don't always hold true to my word. But I will honestly try to have the next one done in the next week or two. Remember to check my profile if you curious as to where I am. _


	20. Success?

T20

_It seems that I've gotten back into a habit of updating in a reasonable amount of time. Although this one is short, it needed to be done, and the next one will be quite the event. I have a little something in my computer waiting to be posted on DeviantArt, but I'm going to keep it a secret until the next chapter is posted._

_Chapter 20: Success?_

* * *

Shadow was sent flying back as he was punched across the face by Pale Bay Leaf. Dark Oak, now too fast for the eye to see, flew behind him and kicked him back to the ground. Luckily, Shadow landed on his feet, and dived to the side just as Dark Oak's sword came crashing down.

The black hedgehog cursed under his breath while getting ready for more attacks. This was not looking good at all. Both Sonic and Knuckles were having a hard time with their opponents, Eggman's starship was keeping a steady rain of fire on the blue typhoon, whose shield was starting to look very weak, and he himself was getting double teamed.

Shadow always prided himself on his status as the ultimate life form, a creature that outmatched all others. But these opponents were machines, machines that were obviously just as strong, or stronger than him. Being physically weaker than them, Shadow ran a quick plan through his head, hoping that he was at least smarter.

After he got an idea, Shadow dashed forwards. Grabbing Tails he shouted "Chaos Control!" and moved Tails on top of a cliff that overlooked the battle, away from any harm that could befall him. He then warped over to Knuckles and warped them both to the deck of the Blue Typhoon without asking for the guardian's permission.

Cream, Amy, and Rouge all looked over as a white light briefly filled the room. Out came Shadow grabbing Knuckles, who looked none too happy to have been yanked away from a battle.

"What the hell do you think you're doing!?" Knuckles yelled at Shadow, who promptly pushed the red guardian to the ground with a snarl.

"I've got a plan, but we need you for it!" Noticing that everyone was looking at his bloody chest, he turned his back to them and continued to speak a little more calmly. "Get to the master emerald and get energy flowing from it again." He then turned to Amy and Cream. "Has Tails repaired the Sonic Driver since its last use?"

Shadow sincerely hoped so, because his entire plan relied on it be able to work.

Amy was the first to respond. She was eyeing the cuts on his chest worryingly. "Are you okay? Those cuts look really serious."

Shadow pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to prevent an oncoming migraine. "God damn it! My injuries do not matter! If we do not fight through our pain then we will all die!" That seemed to make everyone flinch a little. "Eggman is obviously not just interested in taking over the world, he wants us dead too! He tried to kill Tails, and if we do not stop him, he will succeed next time. We must fight until our very last breath if we want to live! NOW ANSWER MY GOD DAMN QUESTION!"

Amy sank back a little, never seeing Shadow this enraged before. Even Rouge and Knuckles looked startled, and Cream nearly had tears in her eyes.

"Y-yes. I think he did."

Satisfied with the answer, the black hedgehog calmed down and started to speak in his calm manner again. "Good. Now contact Sonic and tell him to distract Dark Oak so it isn't paying attention to us." He pointed a finger at Knuckles. "Summon as much power from the master emerald as you can without completely draining it. We may have to use a second shot in case we miss." He then faced the ladies. "Aim the cannon at Dark Oak, but do not fire any missiles at him, that will only draw its attention, and keep the shield up for as long as you can. If we can take out Dark Oak, victory will be within our reach. Everyone got it?"

The rest of the group nodded their heads.

"Good." With that, he started jogging off towards the cannon. Knuckles also started moving, and Amy, Cream, and Rouge, all got to work also.

* * *

Up in Eggman's ship, the doctor paced back and forth irritably after Shadow suddenly disappeared. Even the unconscious fox-boy and stupid knucklehead vanished also, but the Blue Typhoon and X-Tornado remain present.

Assessing the possibilities, Eggman determined that if they were still in the area, they must be in the Blue Typhoon.

"Ha! Do they think that that moving hunk of just can shelter them?" He turned to his control panel and started pressing a few seemingly random buttons. "My new weapon should crack right through that pesky shield.

Eggman plopped back into his chair and started subconsciously toying with his mustache, waiting for the weapon to charge.

From the sky, Sonic could see a very large hatch open on the outer deck of Eggman's starship. Slowly, a very large cannon looking thing lifted out of it, pointing at the Blue Typhoon.

Suddenly, Amy's voice rang through the cockpit. "Hey Sonic! Shadow has a plan, and he wants 

you to turn your attention to Dark Oak to distract him."

"What's he planning on doing?"

"He wants to hit Dark Oak with the Sonic Driver."

"What?" Sonic frowned slightly. Why did Shadow get to do it? After all, it was called the _Sonic_ Driver. Realizing that he was the only one conscious who could fly the jet, he shrugged it off, but another piece of information came to his mind.

"I don't think that Shadow will be able to destroy Dark Oak with only one emerald, regardless of how much energy Knuckles puts into it."

"Really?" Amy's voice seemed a little concerned.

"Oh well. It's too late now, we'll just have to try. But make it snappy. Egghead looks like he's got something goin' on too" replied the blue hedgehog, eyeing the newly displayed cannon suspiciously.

* * *

Shadow was the first to arrive at his station, standing on the platform, waiting patiently for the others to finish their tasks and hoping that the ship was not attacked before they could fire.

Suddenly, he felt then entire tube start to rise up, so he pulled his emerald out and clutched it tightly. If his plan was going to work, his timing had to be perfect. If he was off by even a second, the entire plan would go to waste.

* * *

Knuckles stood in front of the Master Emerald, focusing on it.

"The servers are the seven chaos, chaos is enriched by the heart." The gem started to glow intensely. "Come on, Master Emerald, we need your power." The green gem started to glow even brighter. "Yes, perfect! Keep it coming!"

The red echidna ran over to the intercom and dialed the bridge. "The Master Emerald is fully charged."

Rouge's voice rang through the speaker. "Good job, Knuckles!"

* * *

Shadow tensed himself as he started to see the battle field out the end of the cannon. Entire legions of lesser machines waited in formation for orders while three of the former Metarex Kings stood in front, also waiting. In the sky, Dark Oak was chasing after Sonic in the X-

Tornado.

Rouge's voice rang through a speaker in the cannon. "Everything is all set Shadow. We're ready to fire."

"Good." Everything was going perfectly so far, but Dark Oak was moving around too much. "Before we fire, we have to get it to stay still. Tell Sonic to keep it in one place for a few seconds."

The black hedgehog curled into a ball and started to spin rapidly above the platform. The energy from the emerald entered the chamber and everything started to glow a slight yellow, along with some sparks that danced around the now blurry black and red ball.

oOo

In the air, Sonic was desperately trying to keep Dark Oaks attention on him. He had no missiles left, so he just fired his machine gun at it whenever he could, hoping it would piss it off.

"Hey, Sonic?"

"What is it Amy? I'm a little busy here" the blue hedgehog said irritably as he barrel rolled to avoid a slash from a large, golden sword.

"Shadow wants you to keep Dark Oak still for a few seconds."

Sonic quickly tried to think of a way. An idea occurred to him, so he started flying in front of the Blue Typhoon.

"Okay. I got an idea. Just make sure Shadow doesn't hit me, okay?"

"Um… okay" Amy replied, unsure of the blue hedgehog's motives.

Sonic waited until Dark Oak flew in front of the Sonic Driver and immediately banked left, pushing the throttle forward. The black robot stopped and watched the silver jet start to circle around him at very high speeds. Dark Oak could keep up with the speed, but was taking a moment to assess what to do. After all, it was entirely robotic now, and its thought process would take a few seconds.

"SHOOT IT!" Sonic screamed.

Rouge slammed her fist down on the fire button. "Sonic Driver FIRE!"

The words traveled through to the cannon and Shadow felt himself accelerate forwards at an incredible velocity. As soon as he was out of the cannon, he focused on the emerald that he desperately held on too.

"CHAOS CONTROL!"

* * *

Eggman felt his stomach flip when a flash of white light engulfed the black hedgehog, and suddenly Dark Egg was nowhere to be seen either.

Everyone else watched in fascination, quickly looking around for either one of the fighters. Even Sonic, who was right next to the event, saw nothing.

* * *

After Shadow said the words, he kept moving like normal, but the rest of the world had slowed. Shadow's timing was perfect, inducing chaos control just after the canon had fired him, long enough so the canon could push him fully in real time, and early enough to gain speed while time had stopped.

Already moving at an incredible velocity, chaos control would make his speed seem like the speed of light to any outside source, including Dark Oak.

The black hedgehog slammed into the metal robot full speed. He felt himself push Dark Oak, although with some difficulty. In all honesty, Shadow was amazed that he didn't slice right through.

Realizing the drastic lack of effect that he expected, Shadow spun faster and pushed as hard as he could, sucking up as much energy from his emerald as possible. The black hedgehog's efforts were all in vain as the robot actually caught on and started to resist, nearly bringing Shadow to a stop.

"AHHHHHH!"

The Ultimate Life Form poured every last drop of his power into his push and spin. Suddenly, like something had been knocked loose, he drove the robot forward at light speed in real time. He pushed, and he pushed, and he pushed, until they were far, far away from the battlefield, and until Shadow's stamina finally gave out.

The black hedgehog suddenly felt the environment around him resume, including his gentle fall from the sky. After a few seconds, he hit the ground with a thud, landing on his back.

Barely hanging on to consciousness, Shadow looked around. He was in the middle of a forest, far away from the barren battle ground that he had been at seconds ago. From what he could tell, Dark Oak was gone.

Shadow just laid his head back and tried to steady his oxygen-greedy breath, hoping that he had succeeded. But even if he didn't the dark hedgehog knew he could do nothing about it.

_There you go. Next one in a week or two._


	21. Unrestrained Power

_Woah, that took a while. I rewrote this once and edited it a ton before I was even remotely satisfied. It was hard to make it not seem cheesy, but I think it still does a little. Anyhow, I did the best I could without rewriting it again which could have taken another two or three weeks._

_I beg of you to read the bottom little note thingy from me!!_

_Chapter 21: Unrestrained Power_

OOO

During the past few moments, everyone had forgotten about Tails. Everyone on the Blue Typhoon assumed that Shadow had taken him somewhere, but they didn't know why. Even Doctor Eggman was unaware of where the young fox was.

He was, in fact, not that far away. On a tall cliff that overlooked a mostly destroyed city and a waging battle, he laid out cold and unaware of his surroundings.

_Tails sat cross legged in the middle of a dark void. He almost appeared to be floating, suspended in the middle of nowhere. _

_Suddenly, the yellow kitsune opened his eyes and looked around. With a sigh, he ran a hand through his hair until he touched the spot where he was hit. Quickly, he pulled his hand away and hissed, looking at the small droplets of blood on his glove._

"_Hmph, no wonder I'm out" he mumbled quietly._

_After a few minutes of nothing, Tails leaned back and rested his body on his hands, leaning his head back in a bored manner. He had been sitting here for a while, and nothing had happened. Judging by the bump on the back of his head, he could be out for a while. He was none too thrilled about being asleep for a few days._

_Sighing, and after taking a quick look around, he stood up and started walking around._

"_Hello?" He called out, the only reply being his echo._

"_Well, at least I'm still alive, I think. I guess Shadow or somebody moved me away from Dark Oak."_

_After staring into space for a few seconds, a sudden click noise caused him to snap his head around. Three of Eggman's new robots were standing in line a few yards away._

_Tails turned fully around and got in a ready position. His expression showed that he was wondering why they were in his head._

_Suddenly, the three machines started flying towards him at high speeds. Tails braced himself, ready to defend against the attack, but before they could reach him, a blinding white light erupted around him. Caught off guard, he closed his eyes and instinctively got ready to be hit, but instead of pain, he felt himself get lifted by something._

_Tails slowly opened his eyes after a second of silence to see what had happened. _

_The first thing the young fox noticed was the thing he was laying on; the middle of a giant, otherworldly flower of some sort. He looked over the edge and saw that the previous black floor he had been standing on was now covered in tall grass and other assorted flowers. As his gazed continued over, the three robots could be seen, each tangled and impaled in large, thick vines._

"_What?"_

"_Time to wake up, Tails" said an ominous voice that seemed to come from everywhere. It was feminine, and vaguely familiar to Tails._

_As if on cue, another blinding light suddenly burst into Tails' eyes, except this time it was the sun._

The young fox jolted upwards. As his eyes focused, he realized what was around him. All of the same strange plants, including the one his was laying on, as well as the three robots with vines wrapped around them. Everything was the same as it was in his dream, even the fragrance. The only thing different was that the rest of the world was added.

"What?"

Tails jumped up and stood on the flower, trying to figure out where he was.

He was standing on the same cliff where he stood before breaking Cream out of Eggman's base. Most of the buildings that he had used for cover were now nothing but ruble on the ground. Past all of that, the Blue Typhoon and Eggman's starship could be seen hovering, apparently not fighting at the moment. Even the X-Tornado seemed to be harmlessly buzzing around, almost like it was looking for something. One thing that really caught his attention was that there was no Dark Oak or Shadow. The three remaining Metarex leaders were standing in line in front of thousands more of lesser robots.

Tails was about to fly over there, but he suddenly remembered something. He held up his hands and realized that his chaos emerald was gone.

With an aggravated sigh, he started to fly towards the battle, hoping that things were better than when he was knocked out.



OOO

Many miles away, a tall figure was walking through the shadows of trees in a stalking manner. Its green eye slowly scanned through the area. A sudden bright flash caught its attention for just a second.

Dark Oak emerged from under the shadows. The ground where the flash had come from was ruffled and disrupted as if something prickly had rolled through. When it bent over to look closer, it plucked a small pinch of curvy, black and red quills from the ground.

Without a hesitation, it jumped into the air and flew off fast enough to bend the trees it flew past.

OOO

Eggman watched the incident and was frantically trying to get a hold of Dark Egg over the radio, but all that responded was static. After a few minutes of nothing, the aggravated scientist slammed his fists down on his control panel.

"AH! What did that miserable hedgehog do to my robot!? Where did they go!?"

Filled to the brim with rage, he grabbed his microphone and started shouting to the ship opposite him.

"WHAT DID HE DO?"

"Um, we don't know. We're just as clueless as you" Rouge responded.

It was true; no one knew what Shadow had done. But Eggman didn't buy it. Loosing whatever rationality he had left, he slammed his fist down on a button on the control panel.

The entire starship started to rumble slightly. Eggman, now completely calm and a smile on his face, he slowly lifted his hand and spoke into his microphone.

"The beginning to a beautiful, beautiful end."

OOO

Back on the Blue Typhoon, everyone was puzzled by Doctor Eggman's words.

"What is he talking about?" Amy asked, annoyed.

Rouge was looking around for any change and realized the large cannon on Eggman's ship had begun to glow intensely.



Her heart dropped into her stomach. "Oh no."

"Hm?" Amy looked up and saw Rouge staring blankly out the window. She followed her gaze and also saw.

"What is it, Amy?" Cream asked.

Suddenly, Sonic's voice blared through the bridge. "ROUGE! MOVE THE SHIP!"

Up in the sky, it was easy for Sonic to notice, so he quickly started firing on the cannon in hopes of stopping it. After one pass, Eggman boasted out loud that there was no way Sonic could stop it.

The large machine shuddered one last time before it launched a bright flash of energy.

Amy, Rouge, Cream, and Knuckles watched in horror as the beam made contact. A bright light filled the room, the entire ship shook violently, and then everything was engulfed in flames.

OOO

"No…"

Tails had arrived back to the main battlefield but had only reached the side. He watched in complete and total disbelief as the beam of light tore through his ship like tissue paper, and his friends. Small explosions rippled through the ship as it slowly started to descend.

He fell to the ground, distraught. "I… was… so… close…"

The Blue Typhoon kept falling as fire and smoke poured out of it.

"Knuckles, Rouge, Amy, Cream…"

It started falling faster, getting closer to the ground with every second.

"I failed everyone."

The once proud vessel hit the ground with the terrible sound of twisting steel. The fires on it grew and more and more explosions continued to shred through it. Finally, the entire ship burst into flames as the engine exploded. Dust, fire, and other debris shot out into every direction.

Tails covered his eyes. When he looked up, the only thing left was the burning carcass of his beloved ship, with his friends still inside it.

Overcome with sadness, Tails fell to his side and curled into a ball, breaking his promise to never cry again.



OOO

"EGGMAN YOU BASTARD!"

Sonic flew the X-Tornado right in front of the bridge of Eggman's ship and fired as many bullets as he could. The blue hedgehog also watched as Eggman slaughtered his friends, and wanted his revenge.

However, the bullets harmlessly bounced away and Eggman simply laughed.

"You stupid hedgehog. You have lost, and now I will end this fight and the world will belong to me!"

Inside the bridge, Eggman pressed a button and a swarm of missiles left the ship, chasing after Sonic.

Sonic quickly put the jet into full throttle and started flying around to avoid the missiles. Unfortunately, they were too fast and trailed him by just a few feet.

Getting desperate, he started looking around for something to help him. When he noticed the bag full of fake emeralds still in the back, he remembered an event that occurred five years ago in space. He landed in a Metarex base full of fake emeralds and turned into something dark. It gave the blue hedgehog an idea.

Grabbing the bag, he set it on his lap and unzipped it. He gripped an emerald and tried to remember how he obtained the power he had last time. Eggman warned him that he shouldn't but he had no choice.

He squeezed the emerald tighter. "I can't do it. Why isn't it working!?" Last time he was so blinded by rage that it just happened. Concentrating on all of the negative feelings in him, the emerald started to emit a dark glow.

But it was too late.

OOO

Tails lifted his head when he heard his jet fly over him. The X-Tornado was being chased by a missile trailing close behind it. The yellow kitsune quickly turned his head away before it hit. All he heard was a small explosion and the sound of metal falling around him.

"No no no!"

He started sobbing uncontrollably. All of his friends were dead. Not just one of them now, all of them were.



"Why did this happen?" Tails could only whisper to himself. "Why did they have to die? Why couldn't I save them? Terrible things like this are not supposed to happen to good people like them. THEY DIDN'T DESERVE IT!"

Slowly standing to the ground, Tails faced the man who killed everything he cared about. His eyes were red and puffy, his cheeks were stained with tears, and his fur was ruffled and dirty. All of the scratches and small injuries on his body showed all of the wear he had been through. His eyes were so helpless and confused and his lower lip quivered dangerously. He looked utterly helpless and pathetic just like his was those five years ago.

How could something so evil exist? Something that would so easily take live away in their quest for power should not exist. It didn't make sense at all to Tails. He just could not grasp the idea of something like that.

"Oh, so there is the little furball!" Eggman call out into his microphone. "You are so pathetic, Tails. All of your friends are pathetic thinking that they could fight me. You and Shadow disappeared for five years and just because you came back and learned a few tricks you think you can simply overthrow my armies in one battle!? Well as you can tell by the sudden, um, absence of your friends, you were wrong!" Tails couldn't see it, but Eggman had a very wicked grin on his face.

"Why? WHY DID YOU DO IT!?" Tails was slowly making a transition from sadness to anger.

Eggman always struck him as someone who would lock someone up to keep them out of the way, but not kill them.

"It's very simple. You and all of your friends were in the way. You and that miserable blue rodent have kept me away from my goal for years. Now that one of those problems has been burned to a crisp, all that's left is you; a pathetic little fox who has no one to back him up."

Tails winced as if he had been punched in the face.

"You will pay."

All that filled his mind now were thoughts of revenge, desires for vengeance, and a very powerful sadistic urge to make Eggman pay for everyone who he has hurt. But along with all of those feelings came a feeling of power. He could feel many pulses of power around him. The power was cold and dark, but it felt so good.

A bunch of shining objects started to lift off of the ground. They were the fake emeralds that were in the back of the X-Tornado. There were a ton of them. Every single emerald that Tails had made they had brought, and were now fueling his rage.



They flew over to Tails and started to slowly rotate around him.

_Something is inside me, something dark, cold, and fierce. It wants out. It wants revenge. I want revenge. It offers power. I want power. I crave power. I need power. Power feels good._

"Power… feels good."

Up in his ship, Eggman watched this strange phenomenon.

"What are you doing, fox boy?"

Tails' head shot up and glared at the ship with unnaturally colored eyes. His once ocean blue eyes had darkened to such an extent that they could be considered purple. The fur on his body started to slowly stand on end and darken also. The white fur on his chest and muzzle stayed white and also pointed upwards. His tails slowly rose off of the ground on their own and spiked out threateningly.

Eggman watched with a curious expression. He had seen this before. He remembered the destruction Sonic caused when this happened.

"Oh no you don't!" Eggman quickly smashed down a few more buttons and a small wave of missiles flew from the ship.

Tails just watched with scarlet eyes as the missiles plowed into him.

A large explosion engulfed the dark fox's body. Smoke and dust covered everything for a few seconds. Eggman quickly tried to see through the thick cloud of debris, but it was too thick.

Suddenly, the wind picked up a little bit and small purple sparks crackled around the cloud. The ground started to tremble and beams of dark light pierced through the cloud.

"WOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!"

The dust and debris were blown away and the surrounding ground shook to the point of cracking. Even Eggman's ship rumbled in the air and his armies felt the ground vibrate underneath their metallic feet. Strong gusts of wind cleared everything away and revealed that Tails was still standing.

_If only the cold and heartless will triumph, then I will be coldest and the most heartless._

The dark kitsune's fur was now all completely back except for the tips of his tails, his muzzle, and his chest. His pupils had disappeared and his ears and spiked out to a maniacal degree. Black fire surrounded his body in a blazing torrent and sparks of purple lightning crackled 

around him. All injuries that he had endured today vanished, even the one on his head. Only a little blood remained on his chin and he slowly wiped it off with a fisted glove.

Eggman looked down at what Tails had become. Chills ran up his spine and sweat trickled down his face. For the first time today, he wasn't sure he could win this battle. After all, his main weapon had disappeared with Shadow.

Just as that thought crossed his mind, a sudden beeping caught his attention. The round doctor looked down at his radar and breathed a sigh of relief. As he looked out the window of the bridge, he saw Dark Egg levitating with its sword ready.

"Ah, good. I was worried for a moment."

"You should still be worried, doctor" Tails replied, every trace of his former, innocent self gone.

The human just plopped back down in his chair and raised a brow. "Oh, really? Kill him, Dark Egg."

Tails started to float up into the air, not having to use his tails to fly anymore. He grinned a wicked grin with unnaturally long fangs exposed.

All innocence that Tails had managed to hold on to through his hard life was replaced with anger and sadism. The thought of taking that sword from Dark Oak and driving it through Eggman's chest brought a twisted sense of joy to his heart. The negativity from the fake emeralds had multiplied all of his negative feelings to the extreme, creating what he is now.

"I swear on the graves of my friends that you will not walk away from this fight, Eggman!"

OOO

_Hey, if you want to see what Dark Super Tails looks like go to my bio and click on the link to my DeviantArt and it's my featured deviation. However, if you happen to read this a few weeks after I posted this chapter, it may be moved and if you still want to see it, you may have to look in my gallery._

_Also, this story is going to end in a few chapters, and I'm not sure what to do next. I have a poll in my bio with a few options. I'd like to see what other people would like me to do._

_See ya!_


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